The Basketball Diaries

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This article is about the book. For the film of the same name, see The Basketball Diaries (film).

The Basketball Diaries is a 1978 book written by American author and musician Jim Carroll. It is an edited collection of the diaries he kept between the ages of twelve and sixteen. Set in New York City, they detail his daily life, sexual experiences, high school basketball career, Cold War paranoia, the counter-culture movement, and, especially, his addiction to heroin, which began when he was 13.

Caroll begins using heroin "once in a moon," but, in the last entry, he talks about staying high for four days straight on a "ratty mattress," with his "two sets of gimmicks right alongside [him] in the slightly bloody water in the plastic cup on the crusty linoleum, probably used by every case of hepatitis in upper Manhattan by now."

The book is considered a classic piece of adolescent literature. Carroll later followed up his original memoirs with a sequel of sorts called The Downtown Diaries which follows his relocation to California and his continued addiction to heroin.