A Million Little Pieces

First, I love the photos from South Afrika. Second, I apologize for being delayed in my posting.

Despite being completely swamped with finishing the final edits and revisions to my dissertation (currently 175 pages) before I send it out next week, and preparing my cover letters and applications for jobs and post docs for next year, and the fact that the week before Thanksgiving is traditionally the busiest week of the quarter, AND the fact that I have to help review and select from the 175 intern applications for next year before December 4th, I managed to finish the first book I've read for pleasure in quite some time. It was the controversial not-so-autobiographical novel A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. The Smoking Gun.com says it is "filled with fabrications, falsehoods, other fakery." Still, it was an excellent read.

And what's more important is the fact that I am glad to be reading for pleasure again. I think it may go on hiatus for the next few weeks as I prepare for my defense, but since starting at Stanford two hours of my day are spent on a train. In the beginning I simply listened to my iPod ("Aisha") and observed the other patrons of the CalTrain system. It is fascinating to watch people on trains. Who sits where. Who talks to whom. Who wears what. How the conductors treat people who don't purchase tickets (once my friends ticket printed incorrectly and the conductor wanted her to sing to stay on board!). Every day interactions become interesting studies on human behavior. And looking out the window at the strange shops (e.g., how does Mary's Flag World stay in business??) and people (e.g., the woman wearing a raccoon skin cap who is out every morning at 7:30am preaching her conspiracy theories) we (thankfully?) pass.

Eventually, my sociological study faded into feeling like I should be more productive on the train. I wanted to do school work and printed out some documents to review but that is a hard way to stop and start my day. So, I picked up A Million Little Pieces and became hooked. Even knowing it was not 100% based in fact it is a fascinating novel and a terrifying look at addiction.

As a therapist I have worked with many people addicted to alcohol, drugs, the internet, porn, sex, exercise, eating, etc. and the human capacity for addiction seems almost limitless. Some seems based in our evolution (e.g., the idea of binging on food made sense when we might not have regular meals between hunts) and some seems based on predispositions and neurotransmitters. Working with addicts is typically incredibly stressful and my first alcoholic client taught me so much about not being too invested in client success as a measure of my work. I would work so hard in session and we would agree on how little she would drink and I would leave feeling great and trusting her to hold up her end of the agreement and she would come back the next week having too much to drink and being beaten down and worried that I would judge her for it. And maybe some small part of me did judge her (although I never showed it) but the larger piece judged myself for not finding the magic cure for her.

The truth is, there is no magic cure, especially not for addiction. She needed to struggle and suffer and prepare herself to make the changes she so desperately wanted to make. The idea of rock bottom made sense in this case, although rock bottom is sometimes much darker than we would hope or expect. And that didn't reflect on the good work we each were doing in and out of session. Still, the heartache of watching people in pain strikes a particular cord when willpower is not enough. And although James Frey wrote an excellent novel, I worry about some of the messages it sends about willpower being enough to stop addiction, especially when addiction is part of a larger system or family dynamic or the only coping method available.

All that to say...I can't wait to find the next book for my commute! Any suggestions?

Also, one week until Thanksgiving and I am ready to get out of California, to see my family, and to pass out from a good turkey dose of tryptophan!