Frey
expresses addiction, recovery in new memoir
By Jack Schneider
On-line Forty-Niner
 Drug
and alcohol abuse can be hard on a person’s
body. Breaking the habit, and recovering
from years of abuse is even harder. The
difficult times of going through rehabilitation
and alcohol and drug abuse are presented
in James Frey’s memoir titled “A Million
Tiny Pieces.”
His memoir begins at the tender age of 23
when he wakes up on an airplane. His teeth
are knocked out, his wallet is missing,
and has almost no balance while walking
off the jet way. After Frey leaves the airport,
his parents check him in to a rehabilitation
center in Minneapolis, in hopes that their
son will recover safely.
Some readers might think that Frey’s recovery
from drugs and alcohol is as simple as following
a 12 step process and the Serenity Prayer,
but it is nothing compared to the furious
amounts of pain he has experienced in kicking
his habits. In the beginning of his memoir,
four of his teeth have been knocked out.
As he goes through rehab, Frey graphically
describes getting his cavities filled, and
gets a drill pounded into his gums while
holding on to nothing but tennis balls.
As if there wasn’t any other pain besides
his teeth, he wakes up every morning vomiting,
and gets beat up by a patient named Roy
after criticizing Frey’s work on cleaning
the toilets. Throughout the book, he explains
the rocky relationship with his mother and
father, and how he goes through drastic
mood swings with the doctors and the patients
in the clinic.
On deciding a way to kick the habit of alcohol
and crack (one of the many drugs mentioned
throughout the book), he decides to fight
addiction through his own personal force,
and not the force of a clinic. He denies
the 12 step rules, and breaks the regulations
the clinic has put on him. Fighting vigorously
to stay away from alcohol showed Frey as
a person who knows the temptation of heavy
drinking, but refuses to give into it.
The writing is designed so that the reader
experiences first hand of what Frey is thinking,
feeling and fighting. Sometimes the emotion
is gut wrenching while other times the story
takes on a sadder and bittersweet approach,
especially with dealing with his friends
and girlfriends.
“A Million Tiny Pieces” is a shocking, and
sometimes disturbing look at a person whose
life has been deteriorated by substance
abuse. It is a story of struggle and strife,
and the hell behind defeating the horrors
of addiction, while trying to maintain his
sanity. Although utterly profane and sometimes
shocking, Frey’s memoir shows that when
a person has hit a supreme low, there is
a self-motivated way to recovery.
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