{"id":5293,"date":"2014-01-23T20:02:51","date_gmt":"2014-01-24T03:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=5293"},"modified":"2014-01-23T20:04:52","modified_gmt":"2014-01-24T03:04:52","slug":"he-didnt-show-an-ounce-of-self-doubt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2014\/01\/23\/he-didnt-show-an-ounce-of-self-doubt\/","title":{"rendered":"He didn\u2019t show an ounce of self-doubt"},"content":{"rendered":"

from Psychology Today<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

You Remember James Frey?<\/h1>\n

Is he an example of a writer who completely outgrew his addiction?<\/em><\/p>\n

by\u00a0Stanton Peele<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Addiction in Society<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Recovery manual, or what?<\/p>\n

It’s hard to summarize the James Frey story. He wrote a wildly best-selling memoir about his drug and alcohol addiction,\u00a0A Million Little Pieces<\/em>, in which it turned out he exaggerated the extremity of his behavior and for which Oprah famously confronted him on her show.One thing that was ignored about Pieces was that it was anti-12-step and that Frey opposed the disease theory of addiction\u00a0throughout his book<\/a>, including his stay at Hazelden (the name of the rehab was disguised).<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d rather have that (relapse and death) than spend my life in Church basements listening to people whine and bitch and complain. That\u2019s not productivity to me, nor is it progress. It is the replacement of one addiction with another.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know I won\u2019t ever believe in the Twelve Steps. People like you keep saying it\u2019s the only way, so I\u2019m thinking that I might as well just put myself out of my misery now and save myself and my family the pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAddiction is not a disease\u2026Diseases are destructive medical conditions that human beings do not control\u2026I don\u2019t think it does me any good to accept anything other than myself and my own weakness as a root cause.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Everyone just assumed Frey was a 12-stepper, and that his book was a recovery manual\u2014in his earlier appearances on Oprah he seemed to play to this assumption, without declaring himself one way or the other.<\/p>\n

Flash forward. Frey took a hit from Oprah and his publisher, but he recovered to write several more adult best sellers and then started his own production company. In subsequent Oprah shows he and the host kissed and made up. Frey has emerged from the entire experience fundamentally\u00a0unapologetic about it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He was thrilling, condescending, rude, empowering, and haughty. \u201cHe didn\u2019t show an ounce of self-doubt,\u201d says Philip Eil, then a first-year nonfiction student. \u201cNot a second of wavering. He was 110 percent that there was no truth, that he would live forever through his books.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, Frey turned himself into a highly profitable industry (now called Big Jim Industries!) and wrote the best-selling young-adult series “The Lorien Legacies,” of which the first book,\u00a0I Am Number Four<\/em>, was made into a hit film by DreamWorks.<\/p>\n

So, there is a lot of good news about Frey, and many people find Frey is an extremely good story teller and writer.<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at Psychology Today<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Psychology Today You Remember James Frey? Is he an example of a writer who completely outgrew his addiction? by\u00a0Stanton Peele\u00a0in\u00a0Addiction in Society Recovery manual, or what? It’s hard to summarize the James Frey story. He wrote a wildly best-selling memoir about his drug and alcohol addiction,\u00a0A Million Little Pieces, in which it turned out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}