I hear you. I read Naked Lunch when I was about 18 years old and it fucked me up, but in a useful, dealing-with-the-outside-world sort of way. Do yourself a favor and if you haven't already, seek out the recordings of Burroughs reading "Naked Lunch" himself. His vocal inflections---you can tell when he starts to get into his favorite parts of the book----add a whole new dimension to the work.

It's funny you should mention this since literally just two days ago I acquired the audiobook reading of Burroughs doing Naked Lunch (the whole book, not just those lame snippet CDs with 40 minutes of shitty freeform music)

Well, for that matter seek out any live performance of Bill's stuff by Bill. He's a natural entertainer and storyteller and it shows. That to me is what is so interesting about his technique...it's literature by anecdote.