A Million Little Piece Sparknotes

A Million Little Piece, a memoir of author James Frey and his experiences as an addict on the road to recovery. The proclaimed memoir was published on April 18, 2003. It gained massive popularity and success in September of 2005 after being picked in Oprah's Book Club selection, becoming a top seller. The memoir highlights his journey at a rehabilitation center, where he builds relationships with other addicts, re-establish a relationship with his parents and friends, and where he ultimately gains hope and determination for an addiction future. There is a mixture of things that help Frey down the right path, the most important being his best friend Leonard, his once girlfriend Lilly and a book called Tao Te Ching.

Leonard was a mobster from

She had lived a hard life, due to her heroin addicted mother who sold her into prostitution and caused Lilly her upbringing in addiction. They found comfort in each other, Lilly helped inspire Frey to get better and gave him a reason to live a better life the more he fell for her. He was able to replace his drug and alcohol addiction with Lilly as their relationship progressed so did Frey’s willingness to survive. Referring to his feelings and addiction “One is an overwhelming need for self destruction, an overwhelming need to kill what I feel with chemicals. The other is of Lilly and where she is what she’s doing what’s she’s thinking is she okay. Who is with her and what are they saying to her. They overlap and run together because I need her and her absence and the pain I know she’s feeling fuels the need to kill what I feel.” (pg.340) You can see that the presence of Lilly has altered a part of his path to recovery. As she becomes a part of his dependence, she is pushing out his dependence on drugs and alcohols with the love Frey feels for her. When Lily ran away from the clinic, he went into a crackhouse to bring her back. His determination to save her and get her back overruled his desires to smoke crack given the chance in that moment. Their relationship was an acting challenge that he had to overcome in the end to fully

All patients were given a bible which he has thrown away multiple times, it shows how much his ideology means to him in wanting to get better. As he spends more time in the clinic, he stubbornly rejects doing any of the steps despite his psychologist, Joanne telling him otherwise. Until his brother Bob came to visit him at the clinic, he gave Frey a book called Tao Te Ching. He was also skeptical about the book and its philosophy at first but as he read, its ideology resonated with him and made sense. When he first read it, he felt like “They speak to me, make sense to me, reverberate within me, calm ease sedate relax still pacify me. They ring true and that is all that matters the truth. Although i am no expert on this or anything related to this book this weird beautiful enlightened little book is saying to me. Live and let live, do not judge, take life as it comes and deal with it, everything will be okay.” (pg.180) By making an understanding of what the book offered to him, he was enlightened by its contents and would believe and use it in his