A Million Little Pieces #1

This quarter I chose to read the memoir, A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey. He tells the story the terrifying battle he fought against both alcoholism and heavy drug abuse. The book starts with him waking up on a plane, barely able to lift his head, with no recollection of how he wound up there or where he is headed. As he lies on the floor of the plane, he feels the urge to throw up, “I rub my stomach. I can feel it coming. Fast and strong and burning. No way to stop it, just close your eyes and let it ride. It comes and I recoil from the stench and the pain. There’s nothing I can do” (2). James knows he is out of control but that obviously is not making him want to change, he is too deep in his addiction. When he finally arrives in Chicago and is greeted by his parents who he feels a certain distance from which is obvious by their reactions to each other. As they are driving along in the car, his parents inform James that he is being admitted to a very respectable drug rehabilitation center in the Minneapolis area. He is aware that he will die soon if he doesn’t get help. Although his life is not that important to him, he does not resist which shines just a little bit of hope that he could get better. After he gets checked into the facility, he is analyzed by the doctors and begins detoxification. The extent to which James had submerged himself in these terrible substances is quite overwhelming and hard to imagine. He is an alcoholism is accompanied by the abuse of cocaine, pills, acid, mushrooms, meth, PCP, and glue (9).

The style of writing that is used really helps you get inside James’s head and understand him better. The areas talking about his feelings often use short incomplete sentences or even just one word. You can tell he wasn’t always that way and it’s shocking to see how fast one’s life can be turned upside down. When he is finally alone is his room, the realization of what he has done to his life begins to hit him, “I stand. I look around me. I don’t know anything. Where I am, why, what happened, how to escape. My name my life. I curl up on the floor and I am crushed by images and sounds” (11). I think it is impossible to completely understand until it happens to you. Even just one little mistake can reverse your entire universe