Oprah Goes One-On-One with James Frey

Oprah Goes One-on-One with James Frey


If you've read A Million Little Pieces, James Frey's best-selling memoir, chances are you—just like Oprah—couldn't wait to meet the man who lived to tell this tale.In their first meeting ever, James tells Oprah why he thinks he's alive today. "I think ultimately I'm alive because I wanted to stay alive," he says. "When I went into [rehab] and I was told that I would die soon if I didn't stop what I was doing, it was sort of terrifying." As an addict, James says he thought about death daily, "but for some reason, that time it was the first time my head had been cleared of alcohol and drugs in many years, and it just sank in."James, who experienced multiple drug overdoses during his years as an addict, says he feels both lucky and blessed to have survived his dangerous lifestyle. "I always say addiction's Russian roulette," says James. "An addict wakes up every day and there's a chance they can die—by overdose, by violence, by a car wreck, by anything. For years I woke up every morning sort of like, 'Wow, I'm back.'"

A Million Little Pieces takes readers inside the mind of its drug- and alcohol-addicted author. Sharing his firsthand account of what it's like to be an addict, James Frey says, "It's just a need. It's just insatiability. You need something. You have to have it."James says when the addiction takes over, nothing else matters. "It doesn't matter if you hurt someone, it doesn't matter if you hurt yourself," he explains. "All you have to do is get what you need. It's an obsession." Whether the addiction is to drugs, alcohol, food, or gambling, he says it "becomes an instinct even more so than eating or drinking or finding shelter."Ultimately, James thinks addiction in any form is about erasing emotions. "We feel things that we don't like," he says. "We feel anger or sadness or confusion or some combination of those things, and we find something that, if we take it, it makes those feelings go away for a little while."

In his memoir, James says he invented the Fury to represent a set of otherwise indescribable feelings. "For me the Fury was extreme rage and sadness and confusion and loneliness that sort of mix together." According to James, this mix of uncontrollable emotions made him want to destroy himself and the world around him. "I used to trash my room or I would trash cars," he recalls. "I would sort of attack—idiotically attack—inanimate objects."James believes his inability to understand or cope with the Fury contributed to his becoming an addict. "I didn't know what it was or why I felt it…I didn't know how to deal with it. And I learned pretty young that if I drank something, it made it go away. If I used drugs, it made it go away. And that was always just the goal: to make it go away."

At the tender age of 10, James Frey began drinking alcohol. Growing up, he recalls watching adults drinking at parties and social events—and wanting to imitate them. "I'd always see that when people drank things, their behavior changed and it somehow made them happier, or seemingly happier," James says. " And I always wanted to be happier than I was. So I figured if I take that, it's going to make me happier, too."Behind his parents' backs, James says he would steal drinks at parties or sneak into their liquor cabinet. Then he started drinking at parties thrown by older kids, without his parents' knowledge. By 12, he says, "I was trying to find stronger substances. So I started smoking weed and by 14 or 15 I was trying other things."

Growing up in a small Midwestern town, James says he was labeled a troublemaker early on. "I didn't wear the kind of clothes they wore, or speak the way they spoke, or have the same kind of hair," he explains. "So you get ostracized immediately. And I reacted to that by rebelling against sort of everything and everyone there."Once James got labeled the "bad kid" in town, he says he felt he had to live up to his negative reputation. "I knew I'd never be the football star or the student council president," he says. "Once people started saying I was the bad kid, I was like, 'All right…they think I'm a bad kid? I'll show 'em how bad I can be.'"James explains that being the bad kid became a big part of his identity. "It was what I did, it was who I was," he says. "I wasn't going to ever be the 'favored son,' and frankly, I didn't ever want to be. And I don't mean that with my parents—I mean that in terms of living in [our] town."Although James believes the decision to quit is up to the addict, he says family and friends helped him clean up his act.

James and his brother, Bob, are less than three years apart in age. Although close as brothers, Bob says he never really understood the severity of James's problems. "I was concerned about the way he was conducting himself, I guess," says Bob. "But also I probably was a little bit naïve. … We were younger people then and in some ways, it didn't seem that outrageous. But I knew that he took it 10 steps beyond what everybody else took it."Bob is now a father and high school teacher. Looking back, he says, "I probably should have been much more concerned and horrified than I was."

It's been 13 years since James nearly died of alcohol and drugs. Before his last attempt at rehab, his father, Bob Sr., says there were many times he thought his son wouldn't make it. "We just couldn't understand it and we kept trying to search for the answer," he says. "What was causing this? Did we do something? Was there something we didn't do?"Today, James says he and his parents have never been closer. Although James's dad says he never fully understood his son's struggle, he shares his advice for others: "Keep pressing for an answer. Don't give up. There's love and trust there and it's so easy to say, 'Well, he'll change.' But as a parent, you really need to drill down and get that answer. Understand it. Step in his shoes."

James met his wife, Maya, while working in Hollywood as a screenwriter. They lived next door to each other: "I just called her up and I said, 'I know you love me, I know I love you, and I think you should leave your boyfriend and we should get married.'" Six months later, they were engaged.James and Maya now live in New York City with their daughter, Maren—a miracle for a guy who thought he'd be dead at 25. "I have a pretty amazing life in a lot of ways," James says. "Day to day, life is pretty ordinary. I take the dogs for a walk. Read the paper. Drink my coffee. Hang out with my wife and baby."

MEET THE AUTHOR: LIFE AFTER REHAB

When I was released from the center, I went to jail and Lilly went to a halfway house. Our plan was to meet each other in Chicago, where she lived with her grandmother, when we were both released.I was incarcerated for three months. Two nights before I was to be set free, Lilly's grandmother died. She was distraught, hysterical, inconsolable. I was only allowed to talk to her for 10 minutes a day. In the time we had, I tried to comfort her, calm her down, told her I'd be with her soon. As soon as I walked out of the jail, I called her, she didn't answer. I drove six hours to Chicago, by the time I arrived, she was gone. She committed suicide by hanging. She was 24. Needless to say, I was crushed. I had never loved anyone like I loved her, and in a life filled with pain, I had never felt pain like I felt when she died. My immediate thoughts were to go with her. I bought a jug of cheap wine, spent two days sleeping in my car, crying, trying to decide what to do. I didn't have money or a place to live. I didn't have a job or the type of CV, jail rehab jail jail jail, that would get me a job.I called my friend Leonard. He had always said if I ever needed anything, except drugs and alcohol, he would get it for me. I asked him for $30,000. He had someone deliver it to me three hours later. I buried Lilly and her grandmother, got an apartment, started looking for a job.

There wasn't much for me. After a couple of weeks, I started working as a janitor at a nightclub. When the club would close at 4 a.m., I would clean it. The money was awful. Eventually I got promoted to doorman. I stood outside, checked IDs, broke up fights, threw out drunks. Leonard came to visit me, didn't like what I was doing, thought it was foolish for a recovering alcoholic and drug addict to work at a club, convinced me to come work for him.Leonard was a criminal, so working for him meant I was. Once again, a criminal. Most of what I did involved moving large amounts of cash across the Midwestern states of America. I would get a call, pick up a suitcase in Detroit, take it to someone in St. Louis. I would move cars from Chicago to Minneapolis, carry envelopes from Cleveland to New York. I was paid well, had plenty of time to myself, was able to concentrate on things other than work. I was still struggling to stay off alcohol and drugs, still dealing with Lilly's death, so I spent most of that time figuring out how to move past all of it.I would walk for hours, walk through the streets of Chicago, walk until I was so tired that I was numb. I went to art museums, would stand in front of pictures for hours, would stare until my eyes hurt. I read and read and read, tried to catch up on the reading I missed while I was younger, made a long list of classic books, worked my way through the list. I started writing. I didn't do much, mostly just sat and stared at a blank computer screen. I was, on occasion, able to knock out a few sentences, a paragraph or two, maybe a page. It felt good to me, felt right to me, I started to believe that I could be a writer, believed that if Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac could do it, I could do it.

Leonard came to visit me about once a month. We'd go to dinner, go to basketball games. He encouraged me to write, to pursue something other than the criminal life. I quit working for him after having a gun pulled on me and put in my face during a delivery. I had had guns pulled on me before, but I had always been either drunk or on drugs or both, and I didn't particularly care. This time was different. I was sober. I was relatively healthy. I saw a future for myself. I was so scared that I urinated in my pants, and when the gun was put away, I threw up on myself. I had saved some money, so I started trying to write seriously, I wasn't able to put together a book, so I wrote a movie script. The first one was awful, as was the second and third. The fourth was pretty good. I decided to move to Los Angeles and see if I could sell it.I moved to L.A. when I was 26. I sold the script, sold a couple more, started making honest money. Because he lived in Las Vegas, I saw Leonard all the time. He would blow into town and we'd go out to dinner. I'd take a group of friends along, Leonard would tell ridiculous stories about his life and we'd laugh the night away. I fell in love again, started directing and producing movies, bought a house. After about a year, Leonard disappeared. I was with him at dinner, he told me he was going away for awhile, I didn't hear from him for almost two years. During those years, I started to hate what I had become. Instead of writing books, I was making movies. Instead of doing something that made me feel good, I was making money. My love life fell apart. My dog died. My priorities got messed up. I became greedy, moody, cared too much about what people thought of me. I got lost somewhere. I couldn't find myself.I was in Seattle shooting a movie when I finally heard from Leonard. He was in San Francisco. I immediately went to see him. When I got there, I found out he was dying. He had gotten into a situation with his business that required him to hide himself, and he had spent the last two years out of the country. He had come home to die.

I was with him for two weeks. During those two weeks, we talked about who I had become and why. I decided to walk away from Hollywood, to go back to trying to write books. I decided to start looking for a woman I could grow old with instead of one I wanted for a night. I decided to change again, to shed myself again, to start over again. I decided to chase my dreams, which were of books and a family, instead of chasing money and some empty form of fame and power. When Leonard passed, I put him to rest, just as I had Lilly. I went back to L.A. and I started dating my next-door-neighbor, who had been my good friend for three years. I had always wanted to be with her, but knew that if I was, I had to be serious about it. She wasn't the type of woman who I could play games with, and at that point I was done playing games. Six months after we started dating, we got engaged. I sat down and spent a year writing a book that was subsequently published. My wife had a baby late last year. A daughter we named Maren. I repaired the relationship with my parents, and believe, because we've had to deal with all of the problems that existed between us, our relationship is stronger and healthier than most parent-child relationships.I've never been happier, felt stronger, been more at ease. My life is good now, I'm lucky, I feel blessed to have what I have. Every time my wife tells me she loves me, or my daughter smiles, or I wake up with them, my heart breaks with some sort of joy that has never been replicated and that I never want to lose. I have faith in a lot of things in the world. I have faith in friendship. I have faith in love. I have faith in family. I have faith in things that I can see and touch and feel. And it's a magnificent thing.I don't know if there's a lesson to be learned from me and my life or not. I do know that I have seen too much bad, felt too much pain, have lost too much. I know that through it all, and beneath it all, I always believed I could have a better life, could make my life whatever I wanted it to be. I hope you have the same belief. I hope, if your life isn't what you want it to be, you're taking steps towards some form of change. If I can do it, you can do it. It is said that journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

Take the step.

Take the second, third, keep going.

Now.

Start.

You can read more about James's relationship with Leonard in his book, My Friend Leonard.