Oprah: When I was reading the book and I got to the last page and Lilly has hung herself and you arrived the day that she was hung. I couldn’t even believe it. I’m like gasping. I’m calling people, like ‘Oh my God. This happened!’ So if you weren’t in jail all that time and you’re telling her to hold on, why couldn’t you get to her?

James: I mean, what actually happened was…I went through Ohio. I was there briefly, [then] I went down to North Carolina where I was living at the time.

Oprah: Uh huh.

James: And I was closing up my life there. The process was vastly accelerated from what I wrote in the book.

Oprah: I don’t know what that means. What does that mean, vastly accelerated?

James: I mean it happened in a much shorter period of time. And we were planning on meeting up with each other and she committed suicide before we met up.

Oprah: Was your description of how she died true?

James: She committed suicide, yes.

Oprah: She hung herself?

James: I mean, that was one of the details I altered about her.

Oprah: Okay. And why?

James: Because all the way through the book I altered details about every single one of the characters to render them unidentifiable.

Oprah: So how did she die?

James: She cut her wrists.

Oprah: Hanging is more dramatic than cutting your wrists? Is that why you chose hanging?

James: I don’t think either [is] more dramatic than [the other].

James: I think one of the coping mechanisms I developed was sort of this image of myself that was greater, probably, than—not probably—that was greater than what I actually was. In order to get through the experience of the addiction, I thought of myself as being tougher than I was and badder than I was—and it helped me cope. When I was writing the book … instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image.Oprah: And did you cling to that image because that’s how you wanted to see yourself? Or did you cling to that image because that would make a better book?

James: Probably both.

James: Not very much. I mean, all the people in the book are real. Since The Smoking Gun report came out, two people who were in the facility with me have come forward.Oprah: Yes, they came forward. I saw that New York Times report where they say many of the things that you describe did happen, but maybe they didn’t happen the way you said they happened—that there were encounters with counselors, but not a knock-down drag out.

So all of those encounters where there are the big fights and the chairs and you’re Mr. Bravado tough guy, were you making that up or was that your idea of who you are?

James: I don’t think I describe at any point a knock-down drag out fight at any point in the book. The two confrontations that occur in the book, neither one of them is described as lasting longer than ten seconds. I mean, I think if you put 25 to 30 drug addicted and alcoholic men in a confined space, there are going to be confrontations.

Oprah: So you’re saying … that your description of those confrontations were true?

James: Yeah.

James: I don’t feel like I conned everyone.Oprah: You don’t.

James: No.

Oprah: Why?

James: Because I still think the book is about drug addiction and alcoholism and nobody’s disputing that I was a drug addict and an alcoholic. And it’s about the battle to overcome that.

Oprah: No, but I remember when you were here the last time in the after show a woman stood up and said, ‘You know, after reading this book and seeing you coming through what you came through, the way you did, and you having the attitude that you did makes me feel that I can do it too.’ I think you presented a false person.

Oprah: So, I want to move on to the dentist story because anybody who’s read the book—when you get to the story of him going to the dentist and you describe having two root canals without Novocain or anesthesia, so graphic, so detailed. You say, ‘My face is on fire and the veins in my neck are exploding and my brain is white,’ and you describe the white, white hot pain. … And when I first saw you, that’s the first thing I asked you about: “That’s unbelievable!” Now, you said that that was true. Would you say that today?

James: I…I wrote it from memory. … I had medical documents that supported it … About nine months after the book was released, I was speaking to somebody from the facility. They said that they doubted it happened that way, but that there was a chance that it did—that cases like that are reviewed on an individual basis.

Oprah: This is what I don’t get. Because when you were here before, you said that there were about 400 pages of documents. You said you kept a journal. You kept pages. That there were documents and reports of everything that you did. Because I said, “How can you remember such detail? And that’s how you explained it to me. I don’t know how you remember all the detail and you forget Novocain. So what was true about the dentist and what wasn’t? You did go to the dentist?

James: Absolutely.

Oprah: You went to the dentist. What’s true about the dentist?

James: I mean, I went to the dentist. I had my front four teeth repaired …as I remember it.

Oprah: With Novocain?

James: I honestly have no idea.

Oprah: Well then why did you say you didn’t have Novocain? Because, you know, the last time I went to the dentist, my dentist said that could not have happened. And I said, ‘Oh no. It happened. He told me it happened.’ …So, why did you do that?

James: I mean, once I talked to the person at the facility about it, you know, the book had been out for nine months. We’d already done a lot of interviews about it. … Since that time I’ve struggled with the idea of it…”

Oprah: No, the lie of it. That’s a lie. It’s not an idea, James. That’s a lie.

James: I don’t know if I wish I had put a disclaimer in it or if I had just written about certain events in a different way. I think that would have been the more appropriate thing to do than putting in a disclaimer.”