A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

“I am an alcoholic and a drug addict
and a criminal. I am worse than I have ever been in my life. I am in a clinic somewhere in Minnesota. I want to drink and I want to smoke crack even though I know drinking and smoking crack are killing me. I am alone. If I leave the clinic my family and my remaining friends will write me off. I hate myself so much that I can’t look myself in the eye. I hate myself so much that suicide seems like a reasonable option. I have destroyed every meaningful relationship I’ve ever had. I am vomiting for the seventh time today. The seventh fucking time. I can't do this anymore. I cannot continue to live this way. I cannot continue to live this way.” – Chapter 7, pg. 70

“I have been to AA meetings and I find their philosophy to be one of replacement. Replacement of one addiction with another addiction. Replacement of a chemical for a God and a meeting. There is no higher power or any God who is responsible for what I do and for what I have done and for who I am. There is no higher power or any God who will cure me. There is no meeting where any amount of whining, complaining and blaming is going to make me feel any better.” – Chapter 7, pg. 70

“Though they function as human beings, they function because of their meetings and their dogma and their God. Take away their meetings and their dogma and they have nothing. Take them away and they are back where they started. They have an addiction. Addictions need fuel. I am not convinced meetings and a dogma and a God can fuel mine. If joining AA is the only way to cure me, then I’m completely fucked.” – Chapter 7, pg. 72

“Addicts, as a group, generally score far above average on intelligence tests. I guess maybe we’re smart enough to have figured out how shitty things are and we decide addiction is the only way to deal with it.” – Chapter 10, pg. 149

“I don’t believe that addiction is a disease. Cancer is a disease. It takes over the body and destroys it. Addiction is not a disease. Not even close. Diseases are destructive medical conditions that human beings do not control. It cannot be dealt with using a group or a set of steps. It cannot be dealt with by talking about it. Addiction is a decision. It is a difficult one to make, but it is still a decision.” – Chapter 15, pg. 291

So those were some of my favorite book quotes from A Million Little Pieces by James Frey.

Frey did not disappoint. I was expecting him to pull a 180 on me and accept the AA bullshit. Instead, he stayed atheist and did better than all those lame Twelve Steppers combined. I really like his outlook on addiction and how he

says it’s not a disease, but a choice. The idea that AA is replacing one addiction with another is great. He's totally right. As for the whole Smoking Gun/Oprah controversy: I could care less if Lily slit her wrists instead of hanging herself (I'm just glad she's dead), or if the amount of time Frey spent in jail wasn’t actually three months, or if he didn’t really hit a police office with his car. You mean to tell me everything in a memoir must be 100% true? Because I’ve got a feeling that oxford shirt he borrowed from Warren was blue, not white (Gasp!). If anything, we should be concerned about Jeanette Wall’s memoir. Now there’s an author who has obviously lied to us.