110. From Obsession to Hope
James Frey’s book A Million Little Pieces is a raw, unflinching story about a young man’s struggle with addiction and his fight to claw his way back from the depths of self-destruction. The book does not sugarcoat the brutal realities of substance abuse, nor does it dress up addiction as something glamorous or mysterious. Instead, it exposes the pain, the suffering, and the daily war addicts face against themselves. When I first read Frey’s words, I felt like he was describing my own life with haunting accuracy. There’s a quote from that book that I can’t shake. It rattles around inside me because it doesn’t just describe Frey’s life—it describes mine, and the lives of so many others I’ve met along the way. It’s one of the most accurate depictions of what addiction really is:
“An addict is an addict. It doesn’t matter whether the addict is white, black, yellow or green, rich or poor or somewhere in the middle, the most famous person on the planet or the most unknown. It doesn’t matter whether the addiction is drugs, alcohol, crime, sex, shopping, food, gambling, television, or the (expletive) Flinstones. The life of an addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. An all-encompassing, fully enveloping, completely overwhelming obsession.”
That word—obsession—stops me every time I read it because that’s what it is. Addiction isn’t just about the substance or the behavior. It’s about the way it grabs hold of your mind and refuses to let go.
I used to believe there was something exciting about the life I was living. The parties, the late nights, the reckless choices—I thought they made me interesting. The truth is that addiction is boring. It’s repetitive. When I look back at my own addiction, I can’t point to much excitement or glamour, even though I once believed it was there. What I see now is a cycle that repeated itself every day: waking up sick, scrambling to find a way to use, promising myself I’d stop tomorrow, then breaking that promise by the evening. It’s a cycle of lies you tell yourself and lies you tell others, just to keep the obsession fed.
Frey is right—there’s no joy in that life. Sure, there were fleeting moments when I thought I was having fun, but those moments never lasted. They were quickly replaced by shame, regret, and the quiet, suffocating weight of knowing I was letting everyone down, including myself.
And the part about addiction not discriminating? That one hits home, too. In rehab, I’ve sat beside people from every background imaginable. I’ve sat beside businessmen, mothers, kids barely out of high school, and grandparents who’d lost it all. It didn’t matter if they had money or nothing at all, a fancy title or no job to their name. Addiction didn’t care. We all ended up in the same chairs, wearing the same paper-thin hospital gowns, sweating out the same poisons. That’s what makes Frey’s words so powerful: he strips away all the differences and shows us the ugly truth that addiction looks the same no matter who you are.
I used to tell myself I was different. That my situation was unique, that no one could possibly understand the reasons I used the way I did. The truth is, I wasn’t different. I was just another person caught in the same obsession that’s destroyed so many lives. Addiction is the great equalizer. The details might look different, but the feelings are the same: the emptiness, the shame, the desperation. That realization was hard to swallow, but it also opened the door to my recovery. Because here’s the other side of it: while addiction may not discriminate, neither does recovery. The same way I’ve sat beside people from all walks of life in treatment, I’ve also sat beside them in recovery rooms, and what ties us together isn’t the shame of where we’ve been—it’s the hope of where we’re going.
Today, when I hear that word obsession, it reminds me not only of the darkness I came from. It also pushes me to stay focused on the light I’ve found. Recovery takes that same energy I once poured into feeding my addiction and gives me a chance to pour it into something better: connection, honesty, service, and growth. That doesn’t mean the whispers of addiction don’t still creep in. They do. There are days when the thought slips in—“maybe just once.” But I’ve lived that lie long enough to know it doesn’t end with just once. It ends with me right back in the same cycle, right back in the obsession. So, I keep doing the work, one day at a time, to stay free from the grips of addiction.
Frey’s words remind me of where I’ve been, but they also remind me of why I can’t go back. Addiction promises everything—excitement, escape, relief—but delivers nothing but emptiness. Recovery, on the other hand, doesn’t promise perfection. It promises honesty. It promises a chance at real connection, at building a life where joy and peace aren’t just fleeting moments but something steady, something worth holding onto, and that’s what I’m fighting for today.
And remember, if you’re struggling or know someone who is struggling, please don’t lose hope. If that had happened to me, I wouldn’t be able to help spread awareness today.
