Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions

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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. 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. My interest in reading it was two-fold: yes i was curious because he is a well-known figure, but on its own, that isn’t enough to draw me in. Primarily, it was the subject matter that was the key factor. Now I won’t falsely purport to have an alcohol or narcotic addiction. But I have experienced other vices, namely internet addiction and compulsive overeating. And having dealt with anxiety and depression, I do look for new ways in which to frame my mental health, new techniques to help me cope with my intervals of low mood. But also, knowing people who have had varying addictions and patterns of negative thinking, I try to find ways to give support and counsel to people close to me. 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. Those of us who remember Brand’s last attempt to “help” the problem of engagement in politics by telling young people not to vote might well approach this latest attempt at intervention with wariness. But one of his endearing traits is that there is no criticism you can level at him that he has not already aimed at himself; he talks of the failure of his “quest” as a political campaigner because “the egoic and venomous energy that’s in me” got in the way. When he writes with evangelical zeal about turning around his own addictions, it comes across as well intentioned and heartfelt, but at the same time part of a performance. Brand has always been his own shrewdest observer; his 2013 show was titled Messiah Complex and there’s a sense that this aspect of his character persists, though it’s now channelled into a desire to sort out other people’s problems. “Me, with my proclivity for grandiosity, I will always favour sweeping change and grand revolutions, wild and wordy statements of intent, martyrdom and marvels.”

Wow. A few months ago my mum told me about this podcast she had started listening to called 'Under the Skin' created and hosted by Russell Brand. I was intrigued by the things she told me about it and so started listening and was captivated by the guests he had on, the topics they discussed and the incredibly honest and vulnerable way he shared parts of his own story. Fast forward a few months and from listening to his podcast I learnt about Russell Brand's newest book Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions. 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.” — Russell Brand I think it’s part of being human. To carry a wound. A flaw. And again, paradoxically, it is only by facing it that we can progress” 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?" 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?"but other than that I was really really impressed with how this managed to communicate that it’s OK and it’s Human to make mistakes, to give in to the monkey mind, to choose the wrong ‘program’ to solve our darkest, deepest woes - it’s human to suffer in this way. The comedian Russell Brand, in New York this month, has a point to make about addiction.Credit…Bryan Derballa for The New York Times This book has been written with care and consideration and most of all respect for everyone. I was slightly worried that he would make light of addiction but he is serious yet his usual funny and quirky self and of course throws in the odd "big word" that I had to look up what it meant :-) Recommended Reading: How To Get Over Social Media Addiction Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions Summary By Russell Brand Exploring the very core of your mind and understanding how to regulate patterns to help promote positive change into your life. He does this by challenging your current perspective and displays a detailed account of how you can recover and improve your emotions, thoughts and feelings of misery and unhappiness. It is a very particle approach for anyone and not just those with well know serious addictions i.e. alcohol, sex and drugs. It allows anyone to enter the realm of reprogramming their minds to improve their quality of life. Tools to help you understand the areas of concern or difficulties and creating structured and effective solutions to counter them.

Summary: “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?'”– Registered nurses and social workers can offer crisis support, advice to help you manage your situation, and connections to resources in your community Russell Brand is no stranger to making his mistakes in the public eye, but he emphatically does want to teach others the lessons he has learned. Recovery is unashamedly a “self-help” book based on the 12-step programme used by Alcoholics Anonymous and related groups, rewritten in Brand’s characteristically rococo style to be applied to every kind of addictive behaviour from social media to consumerism, to which we are all hostage to some degree, in Brand’s view: “If you’re like me, you’ll begin to see that you have learned to live with dissatisfaction, always vaguely aggrieved, believing there is nothing better out there for you. There is.”

Help By Simon Amstell Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions By Russell Brand Review

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? Unless you stay — moment to moment — vigilant about your patterns, they will reassert,” says Russell. 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. The concept of twelve-step programs began in the early 20th century United States as a way to help alcoholics recover and rehabilitate, but it’s been widely applied to treatment of a number of addictions since then.