A Million Little Pieces

2 Pages 622 Words

A Million Little Pieces is a Shattering, honest memoir written by James Frey. Frey tells his story and struggles as a recovering crack head, glue sniffer, gas huffer, and alcoholic. This forthcoming memoir begins with the writer awaking on plane with his four front teeth knocked out, a hole in his cheek, and no recollection of the past two weeks of his life. Having come off a crack binge, and on the verge of death, Frey desperately needed help. He was fortunate to have beem scraped off the pavement by a friend, and sent on a plane to his clueless parents. When they saw their son’s battered carcass they knew that his addiction problems were a matter of life or death. They sent James to the famous Minnesota rehab clinic “Hazelden” to try and cure their son of a disease unbeenounced to them. Thus begins A Million Little Pieces, the raw account of James Frey’s six weeks in an intensive rehabilitation program.
James is merely 23 years old when he arrives at Hazelden treatment center. Withdrawn from the outside world, and delirious to his chronic state, James is beginning the first stages of detoxification. He gives the brutally honest details of a less than glamorous day. “I awake and I start to shiver and I curl up and I clench my fists. Sweat runs down my chest, my arms, the backs of my legs. It stings my face. I sit up and I hear someone moan. I see a bug in the corner, but I know it’s not there. The walls close in and expand they close in and expand and I can hear them. I cover my ears but it’s not enough.” “I scream. I piss on myself. I shit my pants.” “I am blinded by blackness. I am gone” (Frey, 11.) Frey spends days in detoxification and contemplates if his life is worth this pain. Unlike other accounts of rehabilitation, Frey doesn’t glamorize the process the intensity of his account is overwhelming.
For the first time in thirteen years Frey is sober and unable to run from his problems. He begins m...