"I've had a great deal of therapy"

Publicly?

No, I mean among friends. I'm sure I've wrongly said, "My parents have pushed me into law school." But that's not true.

So it wasn't the parents. Then what was it?

I get asked this a lot. A deep, deep feeling of unhappiness of who I was, and a deep belief that I was not good enough, and I mean that in the broadest sense. Not good enough as a person, not good enough as a friend, not good enough as a writer, not good enough as a journalist, not good enough in any way. And a horrible confusion that if people around me thought differently about me than me, then maybe I would, too. And so I manipulated those views in a number of ways. One of the ways was lying about my life. Another connected way was lying in my stories. And those two things go hand in hand.

Where did that come from, though? I mean, look, on the surface, you'd lived a pretty charmed life, a pretty good life.

I think those causes are very personal. But I think those causes come from a feeling of not connecting with the world in many ways. That I'm somehow different and bad. And so I felt that way all throughout my life. Now lying was not something I did all throughout my life to address those things, but there were other behaviors -- I was in 8 zillion different extracurricular things in high school. That's another way.

You talk a lot about having gone through a lot of therapy. So, what is the diagnosis? When compulsive liars are covered by the media, they're invariably described as sociopaths.

I don't even know what the term truly means. What I do know for me is that I was not a sociopath or a psychopath. I feel that even in denying that ... [Trails off] I guess that what I feel is an enormous amount of self-loathing, and a self-destructive nature, as well as an outwardly destructive nature.

So you're not a sociopath -- got it.

See, I regret even saying that now, because I can only see the headline. "Glass: Not Sociopath." I hope you won't present it in that way.

Well, let's move on to someone facing that sort scrutiny, Jayson Blair.

I don't follow these things. I don't read, like, Romenesko or anything. I just can't.

But you followed the story?

I know the story, sure.

Did you feel sympathy for him?

My reaction, and this is my reaction to all types of things in the past few years, is that I see them as human tragedies. I'm less interested in them as journalism stories. I read about people all the time who do things that I'm sure they regret, [I have] much greater human feelings for them. I understand what sort of toll this takes on them and their lives. My gut feeling was, this is going to be a terrible time for him. I hope he finds some peace through it.

You, meanwhile, have made a return to journalism writing about marijuana laws in Canada for Rolling Stone.

I wrote a piece for Rolling Stone. They published a piece of mine.

What was it like returning to journalism?

I just don't feel comfortable talking about that, except to say one thing, which is that I've been unbelievably appreciative to Jann Wenner and everyone at Rolling Stone, which has been kind and generous. Other than that, I don't have anything to say.

Are you going to do more?

I just don't want to talk about the whole journalism thing.

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