There's a preface to Junky written by an associate of Burroughs's - might even have been Ginsberg, I'm not sure - which says something along the lines of "his emotional self-discipline makes even the liberties he takes seem justifiable". In other words, some people are grown-up enough or together enough or self-aware enough or whatever it is to get away with being amoral, because somehow even the worst misdeeds don't compromise their fundamental spiritual integrity. Very particularly American mode of exculpatory self-mythologising, I think. Bukowski's well into it too.