In sanity.... A million little pieces

I recently read A MILLION LITTLE PIECES by James Frey (borrowed from Pranav). I was initially quite skeptical of reading the book, since the back cover said it was a story of a drug addict's rehab time. Frankly, i thought he would banter about the difficulties of rehab & ways of doing it, blah blah. Interestingly the book is controvertial: the author has listed it as non-fiction but changed a some incidents to suit the story. The publisher has written a note to the same effect, as the fact came up after publishing the first print.

Frey describes his journey through rehab almost like a fiction story, the whole drama is continous & catchy. Starting with his beaten up image to his time through rehab & his disbelief in the entire program, the pace is quite comfortable. While accurately describing most of the symptoms & rehab programs, Frey manages to weave together a small romance, some drama & a lot of retrospection into the story.

I was caught by his self-talks around halfway through the story where he starts wondering why AA (alcoholics anonymous) works or doesnt work, why the success rate of de-addiction is so low as less than 15% , and who is responsible for the larger ill prevailing in the society. 

While Frey takes complete moral responsibility for his own drug addiction and state of mind, he hates the support programs which try to channel his addiction towards belief in god, social support, confessions, etc. His musings over belief in god being just another addiction to run away from responsibility & life are quite thought-provoking. Also, he talks about how some doctors are trying to prove that addiction may be a genetic disease & why he wants to reject the possibility (even though his grandfather was an alcoholic), and take moral responsibility.

However, the climax about the start of his addiction - the reason he runs away from life, hates his parents (even though he knows they love him & support him all the time) and hates society / wants to die takes away the prize. It comes at the end of the story, and is quite unexpected as it does not affect the story from point of its continuity, but makes an important point all the same.

One should read the book to understand the perils of addiction, the feeling when addicted, to know about addicts & their thought process in general & the state of society & the world that leads people to drug abuse & addiction. 

I felt that the story was most part fiction, and the romance (which takes up quite a lot of the story) could have been completely avoided to make the story crisp & precise. But its a good read nonetheless.