'The Intoxicating High of Racism'

“The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?”, William S. Burroughs wrote in Junky. “The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don’t really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict.”

For MSNBC, racism is to the Comcast-owned network what heroin eventually became to Burroughs, and like his addiction, they need their fix, early and often.