Finally something relevant shows up
if you google the words James Frey dry drunk. Even from my minor experience of "dry drunk" behavior this was obvious from the page excerpt I read of the thing. I've been waiting for the big obvious article on this phenomenon but until now there wasn't really any mention at all--funny, in the past week of hubbub.
Heather King, recovering alcoholic and author of the memoir Parched told the truth in her book and seems fun, humble, flexible, truthful--all the traits that characterize someone who has healed an addiction for real, and none of which remotely describe James Frey.
Alcoholism is a nondramatic stasis--no real emotional movement happens despite the accident reports--and a dry drunk just continues that stasis. The kind of rage and self-aggrandizement apparent in Frey indicate a dry drunk--further indicating a lack of a real story. That was always the intuitive repulsion for me in even picking up the book.
I was so grateful for King's article at PW today--she describes it so well. Definitely check out the whole thing if you can, but here's an excerpt:
Drama is the movement from narcissism to humility, but Frey is exactly the same at the end of his story—minus the drugs—as he is at the beginning: an insecure braggart without a spark of vitality, gratitude or fun. "A ballsy, bone-deep memoir," Salon.com called it, but for any alcoholic worth his or her salt, throwing up blood, puking on oneself, and committing petty-ass crimes in and of themselves couldn't be bigger yawns. What's gritty is the moment, knowing you're dying, when the world turns on its axis and you realize My way doesn't work. What's ballsy isn't just egomaniacally recounting your misdeeds; it's taking the trouble to find the people you've screwed over, looking them in the eye, and saying you're sorry. What's bone-deep—or might have been if Frey had done it—is figuring out that other people suffer, too, and developing some compassion for them. Oprah speaks of "the redemption of James Frey"—but redeemed from what, and by whom? Sobriety, in my experience, isn't the staged melodrama of sitting in a bar and staring down a drink to prove you've "won"—as Frey does upon leaving rehab. It's the ongoing attempt, knowing in advance you'll fall woefully short, to order your life around honesty, integrity, faith.