Conscious Choice: Tough Talk About Alcohol and Recovery

July 2003 | Choice Books

Tough Talk About Alcohol and Recovery

by Mark Harris

A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey (Nan A. Talese, 2003), 352 pages.

Writer James Frey blames it on "The Fury." That’s his term for the anger, pain, and rage he says seems to have been with him since birth. It’s also about the only stab at an explanation offered in his recent memoir to explain "The Why" of his wild descent and recovery from the extremes of alcohol and drug abuse.

A Million Little Pieces, has been hyped by some critics as a major literary achievement. Frey himself doesn’t hold back from declaring his own intention to be "the greatest writer of his generation." The publishing hype is unquestionably (or, I should say, questionably) in full gear on this one. Frey does deliver an effective, grueling exposition of page-after-wrenching-page of his harrowing efforts to save himself from himself. The writing has an eloquence comparable to the precision mechanism of a nail gun, if you like that approach.

A Million Little Pieces, begins at age 23, when Frey’s parents wheel him into the Hazelden treatment center in Minnesota. He’s not exactly in good shape. Years of alcohol, crack, and other illicit substances have left him a wreck of a young man, near death’s door. So begins Frey’s account of rehab, a tale told according to the author’s own rules of recovery.

Actually, there’s only one rule for Frey: don’t use! Otherwise, Frey has no need for the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) philosophy promoted at Hazelden. He bristles at much of what he hears, absolutely refusing to accept any concept of a "higher power" or God, insisting with a kind of stubborn determination that he and he alone will be responsible for whatever sobriety he earns. Sober now for nine years, who’s to argue?

The Question of Why

What’s more interesting is the larger question of why a person becomes a drug addict. Unfortunately, this is where A Million Little Pieces, reveals the source of its eventual (nail gun) tedium. Frey makes it plain he’s not all that interested in why he became an addict, only in staying sober. Staying sober is good, but nonetheless, so is understanding yourself.

Frey basically takes the stance that he doesn’t want to put the blame on others or on any particular circumstances of his life. The blame as he sees it lies completely with himself. He seems to fear that placing the blame for his addiction on childhood experiences is making excuses for himself.

At one juncture in the story, Frey entertains the possibility that the chronic, painful ear infections he endured as a newborn, which he only first learns about during a joint therapy session with his parents, might have played a role in feeding "The Fury." Agitated from birth, the infections go undiagnosed for far too long (one doctor tells his parents he’s just a "vocal child"). Consequently, Frey endures multiple surgeries to correct the condition, up until the age of 12. But this history is brushed aside and treated as unrelated to Frey’s rehab drama with its colorful, cantankerous cast of Hazelden characters.

Of course, the experience of an early infection, or any kind of early childhood trauma, would not in itself necessarily cause later addiction or other long-term psychological problems. But, importantly, it’s the inability to eventually emotionally process the pain of an early trauma that can potentially set the stage for later troubles. Drug addiction becomes then just an anesthetic for the hardened gray matter of unresolved trauma.

If this is the case, Frey’s dogged refusal to embrace the 12-step belief system actually has a kind of logic to it. For why would his alcoholism be an incurable "disease" (the AA model), rather than a conditioned pattern of behavior, a response to feelings experienced in a particular environment and life circumstances? Why then wouldn’t it also be a problem that is potentially curable?

What 12-step meetings seem mostly to offer is a sense of community, a kinship based on safe, open discussion of personal, intimate emotional or family issues. In our increasingly rootless, competitive, and, for many people, culturally alienating society, it’s small wonder 12-step programs have appeal. They can be a salve to our daily isolation and cultural turbulence, rife as it is with so many depressive and addictive disorders. But whether participation in 12-step meetings necessarily leads to emotional healing or growth is hardly a given. In fact, 12-step meetings can just as easily serve as another form of psychological denial, holding at bay deeper, possibly more painful core emotions a person might face. There are no guarantees.

The paradox of Frey’s experience is that it was through a stint at Hazelden that he set the footing in place for a sober life, even as he rejected the belief system advocated there. But paradox runs like a river through much of the recovery experience. Many people go to 12-step meetings to avoid pain. Yet getting in touch with painful core emotions may be the only way to move beyond the need to go to such meetings. There’s also the danger of falling into making 12-step programs more a way of life than a way to a life, and so rather than feel in a therapeutic context the depth of their pain or anger, some individuals instead repeatedly, incessantly "work the steps," as they say, often for years on end. Whether all this constitutes emotional progress remains problematic. It’s also obviously for each individual to determine.

Plainly, the AA program was not for James Frey. Nor are the 12-steps for every addict or family member of an addict. One therapist tells me she suggests 12-step groups to people during what she calls "first-stage recovery" when they’re first getting sober or first confronting an abusive past and are in crisis. Actually, that’s kind of the gist of the James Frey story, isn’t it? Getting stable, patients will then move on to explore more fully the roots of their emotional experience.

It’s too bad A Million Little Pieces, doesn’t get past this first-stage to explore more thoroughly what might lie beneath.

Mark Harris is a Chicago-based writer. Visit his Web site, A Writer’s Voice.

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