Oscar-Winner William Monahan's (Poorly Documented) Past Life

Long before he published a novel and waaay before he won an Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Departed, William Monahan was an excellent and scabrous writer for the weekly New York Press.

In particular, I recall one piece about heroin he wrote in 1996 that was sort-of OK until you got well into it, at which point he began talking about an afternoon a week or so previous that he’d spent under its influence. And at which point it got much more vivid and affecting. (It clearly touched a nerve in NY Press readers, who wrote letters to the paper that got far beyond the standard cant articles about heroin usually provoke.)