Stephen King on Addiction, Lies & James Frey

In Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King offers a poignant look into the James Frey affair which goes deeper than simply the question of whether or not he lied:

"The amazing thing is that anyone — including Oprah — believed any of Frey's stories once they realized he was trying to manage good sobriety without much help, because this is a trick very few druggies and alcoholics can manage. I know, because I'm both . . . And did I wonder, pre-Oprah, if there were other lies in A Million Little Pieces? Nope. I just wondered when they'd start coming out. Because if my own career as a drunk both active and sober has convinced me of anything, it's convinced me of this: Addictive personalities do not prosper on their own. Without unvarnished, tough-love truth-telling from their own kind — the voices that say, ''You're lying about that, Freckles'' — the addict has a tendency to fall back into his old ways."

read the whole thing.