Victim? Or Victimless?

            I just started A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. My mom read it awhile ago, and said I was finally old ennough to indulge as well. This book is a (kind-of) memoir of a 23 year old alcoholic, cocaine/meth/every drug ever addict who is checked into a Rehab Facility. He comes off as very sympathetic and quite sweet when we meet him. I mean, besides the fact that he's missing multiple teeth, has a hole in his cheek and nose, and doesn't remember the past 2 years of his life. But who's the victim here anyway? Is it James? To the durgs and alcohol? Or should we blame it on himself. Afterall, it's not like he had some tough life, he just decided, when he was 10 years old, and do drugs at 14.
             James as the victim, is a very easy way to look at things. He's just a slave to the substance. After checking into Rehab, he describes a "User's Dream" that he has, do to withdrawal. In this dream, he is alone in front of a table of everythiung he's ever done. He sips some alcohol and he feels amazing. He desires that feeling so he goes into the rest of the bottles, drowning himself in the liquid in order to find paradise. He does the same with the drugs, snorting, sniffing, smoking, huffing, injecting, swalloing until everything on the table is gone. I mean, at this point, he is trying really hard at the Rehab. But is it because he wants to be repaired? Or because he has no other options?
            To look at James as the problem is a little harder. Not only do we have to look at his past, we have to examine his present more carefully. Could he've stopped drinking at 11? Not taken drugs in the first place. I mean in a way it's a kind of tug-of-war between James and the substances, and sometimes (meaning all the time before rehab) James let's the subbstances win.
            Obviously James suffered a terrible thing hapen to him. but is he only the victim? I mean, every user has two sides to them. Every person too. You have to decide which side you'll let influence you.