Life lessons: Augusten Burroughs

Augusten Burroughs. Photo / Supplied

You know when you're really in love when you don't have the desire to call your friends and perform an autopsy on every date; in fact, you feel no desire to tell anybody much of anything. You smile when you are alone shopping for olives or cheese.

Mental illness is psycho-biological. Meaning, there's a hubcap where a distributor cap should be. And there are two kinds of therapists: those who are truly gifted with perspective and empathy and those who are profoundly confused and possibly sick, and must feed off others.

Madonna is the best role model possible for a child. She was not born into wealth or a powerful family. She created herself from the elements in the universe around her - a true star. She says: if you want it, get it. It's that simple.

I changed my name when I was 19. I didn't want to be the person I was. I wanted to start over. I wanted to erase the past.

The internet is our most magnificent achievement. It has changed everything and will change it all again. I met my best friends through it, became published as a result of it and found my partner right there in the midst of it. If I am off-line for two hours, I feel nervous. I dream of the day when I have Google browser contact lenses.

My advice to a young person who is gay: cut from your life everybody who doesn't love you. Study martial arts. It's good for a gay person to have at least one spectacular surprise.

The way to train a pet is to show it what you want it to do and give it a small piece of freeze-dried liver when it does it. You can train the average dog to do most anything in a day or two as long as you have freeze-dried liver in your pocket and are very clear in your instructions.

It is a perilous shame the phrase "hit rock bottom" exists because for an alcoholic that's the ultimate snooze button atop the alarm clock. The addict thinks, "Well, I'm not there yet... so I must be okay for a bit longer." This would be wrong. True rock bottom is followed in most cases not by treatment but rather an autopsy.

People seem to believe there is a special bond between a gay boy and his mother. Only, as her gay son grows up, the two now have something surprising in common - men. Happily, gay boys now have fathers who wear open-toe sandals and listen to Rufus Wainwright, so perhaps Darwin was right after all and adaptation is right there before us.

I am not religious. But the more I have studied cosmology and particle physics, the more unspeakably creative, inspired, impossibly magnificent "it" really is. How is it that such unusual parts and pieces all came to be? And work together? So perhaps there is some kind of wondrous glue.

* Augusten Burroughs is the author of six books, including the bestselling Running With Scissors and last year's A Wolf At the Table: A Memoir of My Father.