okay...spoils, I suppose, if someone else wants to read this.
I've been reading his blog/tweets/etc. for awhile, so he pretty much writes in the book like he writes everywhere else, so it wasn't too jarring for me.
I agree that he's probably too harsh with the bandmates from Soul Coughing. I imagine he *was* horrible to deal with while he was an addict, but I suspect the truth lies somewhere in the middle. He was a dick, but they were also assholes. I do think it was a "bad, abusive relationship" that he had to get out of before he could move forward with his life in a lot of ways, including the drugs and just being a happier person in general.
I actually like him as much as I ever did. I kind of saw the book as a reverse bell curve, in a way. It started off easy to read, then in the middle it was really rough and I felt like you did. "Jesus, Doughty's an asshole." But then as the curve started moving up, I enjoyed him again. I think he actually did a pretty good job of showing us the person he was early on, then the person he was while on the drugs, and the person he is now.
I like Doughty better without Soul Coughing (not that I don't like Soul Coughing, but I do like the singer/songwriter thing he has going on), so perhaps I'm his target audience anyway. I think that like many creative types, he has a very dark side, and he showed that side pretty openly in the book. (For what it's worth, I think he showed it fairly openly in his concert I went to as well.) I'm drawn to the damage, I guess.