FREY EXPRESSES ADDICTION, RECOVERY IN NEW MEMOIR

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.