Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions

Product Information

As I write this review I am 600 days sober (I didn't know the exact number before starting this review. It just worked out well.) I really wanted to like this book and more than I actually did. I wanted to give this book 3.5 stars. It might be the fact that I actually do like Russell Brand and the message of the behind the book more than I actually liked the book.

With a rare mix of honesty, humor, and compassion, comedian and movie star Russell Brand mines his own wild story and shares the advice and wisdom he has gained through his fourteen years of recovery. Brand speaks to those suffering along the full spectrum of addiction--from drugs, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar addictions to addictions to work, stress, bad relationships, digital media, and fame. Brand understands that addiction can take many shapes and sizes and how the process of staying clean, sane, and unhooked is a daily activity. He believes that the question is not "Why are you addicted?" but "What pain is your addiction masking? Why are you running--into the wrong job, the wrong life, the wrong person's arms?" This interview with comedian, actor, author, and activist Russell Brand has been a long time in the making and almost didn’t happen — but we’re so glad it did. With nearly fourteen years of clean time under his belt, Russell Brand understands recovery quite well. He speaks on it often, offering revolutionary messages of hope and change. From time to time, he even involves himself in politics, fighting for greater access to treatment and an overhaul of laws that punish addicts rather than help them. So it comes as little surprise that he would eventually disseminate his understanding of recovery in the form of a self-help book. In chemistry, when two substances are introduced, if either component reacts at all then both are changed forever’ a rare mix of honesty, humor, and compassion, comedian and movie star Russell Brand mines his own wild story and shares the advice and wisdom he has gained through his 14 years of recovery. Brand speaks to those suffering along the full spectrum of addiction from drugs, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar addictions to addictions to work, stress, bad relationships, digital media, and fame. Brand understands that addiction can take many shapes and sizes and how the process of staying clean, sane, and unhooked is a daily activity. He believes that the question is not why are you addicted? but what pain is your addiction masking? Why are you running into the wrong job, the wrong life, the wrong persons arms?In the book’s technical aspects, it is well written - a surprise to me as I didn’t know Brand was an accomplished writer. If anything, it is at times over written to disguise the fact that it gets repetitive as it goes along. There is one theme - recovery - and while the structure (the 12 step program) ensures that this theme follows a trajectory, the analysis starts to feel shallow, and dare I say it, a bit prescriptive, after a while. You can skip passages and you won’t really lose out on much. Even when ayahuasca seems to solve his problems with alienation and depression, he finds reason to worry: A wound that needed status to avoid intimacy has been healed. I was healthy, I was in a relationship with someone who had a happy childhood how would I now find the motivation to earn attention from strangers?

Brand doesn't give us anything new here other than his own experience and testimony of the 12-Step program, but he does it with more insight, expanding the concept of *Higher Power* with wisdom and his own comedic touch. He applies the 12-steps to a wide variety of the obstacles that might be keeping us from being the person we are meant to be (drugs, alcohol, food, anger, selfishness, depression, etc.). Rather than just educating myself, I came away with a desire to improve myself and be a little more at peace in my environment, and a little enlightenment. Some clinicians argue against the 12 Step program concerned that a participant would only be replacing one addiction with another...I think Brand gives an eloquent argument against that opinion. When you start to eat, drink, wank, spend, obsess, you have lost connection to the great power within you and others. The power around all things. There is something speaking to you and you don’t understand it because you don’t speak its language - so you try to palm it off with porn but it’s your spirit and it craves connection.What unhealthy habits and attachments are holding your life together? Are you unconsciously dependent on food? Bad relationships? A job that doesnt fulfill you? Numb, constant perusal of your phone, looking for what?

This book, Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions, approaches the topic of addiction recovery from two directions. Not only does Russell Brand offer insights into the 12 Steps utilized by most support groups, but he also uses the 12 Steps as a springboard to discuss his own unique perspective on recovery. Those who remain wary of the 12 Steps may find that they can relate to Brands particular take on them with relative ease. This book has that raw authenticity and truth that I love about the podcast. His openness to new ideas and to self-growth. This book takes Alcoholics Anonymous' twelve-step program (something I'd not heard of before starting this book) and adds Russell Brands honest, comedic twist to it. His writing is sometimes magically whimsical and sometimes dark and gritty. He shares some of his own experiences with the twelve-step program and puts it into new wording. You don't have to be dealing with a specific addiction to get things from this book. There's a lot in here, all fascinating and thoughtful and anyone interested in self-growth or who may be feeling anxious or dissatisfied with life would benefit from giving this a try. Yes - grain of salt - yes - but that’s with anything…Could probably skip the whole anecdote in step 6…

The other message Russell preaches/talks of is that he was probably more of a mess than most people do. If it could work for him, I can work for anyone. One thing that does not probably help this book is that Russell is naturally a funny man, but he is talking about a very serious subject where humour works against it. Thought adding a load of F-bombs does not make things funnier or relatable. This system offers nothing less than liberation from self-centredness, a new perspective, freedom from the illusion of suffering for anyone who is willing to take the necessary steps. Unless you stay — moment to moment — vigilant about your patterns, they will reassert,” says Russell.

There were parts of the book that were so honest that I could almost feel his pain that he had gone through at the time but then that is normal for people in recovery, we can feel each others pain as more times than not we have gone through the same anguish, pain, heartache and self destruction. With a rare mix of honesty, humor, and compassion, comedian and movie star Russell Brand mines his own wild story and shares the advice and wisdom he has gained through his fourteen years of recovery. Brand speaks to those suffering along the full spectrum of addiction—from drugs, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar addictions to addictions to work, stress, bad relationships, digital media, and fame. Brand understands that addiction can take many shapes and sizes and how the process of staying clean, sane, and unhooked is a daily activity. He believes that the question is not “Why are you addicted?” but "What pain is your addiction masking? Why are you running—into the wrong job, the wrong life, the wrong person’s arms?" Most people that get involved with twelve-step programs go, ‘Oh, wow. Everyone should be doing this!'” says Russell Brand, author of Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions. “Because of course once you get rid of drugs and alcohol one day at a time, you start to realize that drugs and alcohol were never the problem. The problem was your own emotional state — your own reaction to the world.”Since Simon Amstell started performing long-form standup 10 years ago, hes made a virtue of holding his angst up to public scrutiny with an honesty that many performers shy away from, so its perhaps inevitable that a book should follow. Yet its hard to escape the sense that this particular book doesnt quite know what it wants to be. He nods to this in the introduction, explaining that the original suggestion was to publish transcripts of his major standup shows. And who for? For people who dont like hearing standup out loud? With a rare mix of honesty, humor, and compassion, comedian and movie star Russell Brand mines his own wild story and shares the advice and wisdom he has gained through his 14 years of recovery. Brand speaks to those suffering along the full spectrum of addiction - from drugs, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar addictions to addictions to work, stress, bad relationships, digital media, and fame. Brand understands that addiction can take many shapes and sizes and how the process of staying clean, sane, and unhooked is a daily activity. He believes that the question is not "why are you addicted?" but "what pain is your addiction masking? Why are you running - into the wrong job, the wrong life, the wrong person's arms?" This manual for self-realization comes not from a mountain but from the mud…. My qualification is not that I am better than you but I am worse.” My qualification for writing this book is not that I am better than you, its that I am worse. I am an addict, addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex, money, love and fame. A total masterpiece. Wholly relevant to our time of overwhelm, addiction, egoistic pursuits and selfish me, me, me-ness. Russell Brand opens his heart and eloquent soul to walk us through the 12 Step Programme as initiated in Alcoholics Anonymous. He shares his personal life experiences and realisations in a touching, honest expose of deepest darkest revelations with the clear narrative of teaching throughout. Learning robust addiction squashing tools from a loose tongued, erudite English chap serves to make the programme feel all the more accessible . What I loved about this book most effusively is his ability to create prose from functional self-help. At times it felt like poetry. Russels personal life stories illuminate the premise per step in poignant, credible verbosity. He compels the reader to embrace recovery from addiction day by day. Applicable to every toxic habit that consumes us from drink to food to social media, I didnt want the book to end and will read it again and again.