Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions

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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.” 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. So it’s disarming to find that, behind all the verbosity and therapy-speak, there are glimmers of good sense in here. While the insights are not original, the experience of them is unique, and it’s Brand’s own story that gives the book its energy. Whether he really will change the world by example only time will tell; in the meantime, for anyone with an abiding interest in Russell Brand, it offers an entertaining glimpse into the latest stage in his transfiguration. Russell Brand is a gift to this world! His ability to translate how to transform your life using modern language and humor is an invaluable resource for a new generation. This book is a must read!” —Tony Robbins, New York Times bestselling author of Unshakable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook and Money: Master the Game Do we really overcome addiction, or is it an ongoing struggle that requires constant attention and maintenance?

This is the age of addiction, a condition so epidemic, so all encompassing and ubiquitous that unless you are fortunate enough to be an extreme case, you probably don't know that you have it. Sell me phones and food and prejudice, low cost and low values, low-frequency thinking. We are in a cult by default. We just can’t see it because its boundaries lie beyond our horizons.” I don’t wake up in the morning and think, ‘Wow, I’m on a planet in the Milky Way, in infinite space, bestowed with the gift of consciousness, which I did not give myself, with the gift of language, with lungs that breathe and a heart that beats, none of which I gave myself, with no concrete understanding of the Great Mysteries, knowing only that I was born and will die and nothing of what’s on either side of this brief material and individualized glitch in the limitless expanse of eternity and, I feel, I feel love and pain and I have senses, what a glorious gift! I can relate, and create and serve others or I can lose myself in sensuality and pleasure. What a phenomenal mystery!’ Most days I just wake up feeling a bit anxious and plod a solemn, narrow path of survival, coping. ‘I’ll have a coffee’, ‘I’ll try not to reach for my phone as soon as I stir, simpering and begging like a bad dog at a table for some digital tidbit, some morsel of approval, a text, that’ll do” This program is simple and it works well with complex people. It is made up of ancient but timeless principles: overcome the ego, connect to a Higher Self, a higher purpose and serve others. Step 12 is the apex but also a spur to remind us that our work is never finished, we are on a journey of discovery and service and each of us has a unique purpose to realize and an intended self to recover.”

We crave connection, but so much of the time we are not alive, neutralized. Who are you when you’re listening to the radio in traffic? You are not you, you are on standby. Mostly we are free-floating and disengaged, lost in the spectacle.” Whether you’re a gnarled and boisterous apprentice mechanic or a Cambridge don, solving conundrums from your high-tech wheelchair, there is in most cases a comparable inner world. If not a basic binary, a universal pantheon of inner deities and demons which, in our race to total rationalism, we have unwisely discarded. The Greeks knew these gods dwelt not on Olympus but upon the summits, crags and slopes within. This inner realm interfaces with external phenomena for good or for ill. This program, like all mythology, is a methodology for management.” 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.” I didn’t necessarily agree with everything that was written, but there were some very interesting ideas in this book. Also, it was deeply personal in places, so I guess it wasn’t easy for Russell to be this open and sincere with the whole world. It’s something I really appreciate. And seeing the growth in his persona was phenomenal.

We often define addiction as a symptom of something greater. So why not take the same approach to recovery? If our addiction preceded our addictive behaviors, we may just as easily suggest that our recovery preceded our positive lifestyle. In fact, the two manifest as part of the same journey. Without addiction, we may never have discovered our inner light in the first place. Recovery does not require us to construct a personality, covering up our faults with a veneer of forced moral responsibility. We must only tap into the person that already exists, and work to nurture that person. Russell Brand puts this in mythological terms.Throughout the early chapters in Recovery, Russell Brand references a duality of self. A multiplicity, really. He mentions the Jekyll and Hyde complex understood by most addicts and alcoholics, but also suggests the existence of another. A better, higher self that we’ve yet to realize. While the insights are not original, the experience of them is unique and it's Brand's own story that gives the book its energy. For anyone with an abiding interest in Russell Brand.” — The Observer (UK) There is no better lesson to be learnt than by someone who has lived it. And with that in mind, Russell Brand is a man to listen to. Carefully. Beneath the performance he talks sense. A lot of it.” — Stylist (UK)

Russell Brand is undeniably engaging. I really enjoyed his Revolution book from a couple of years ago. 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.) What unhealthy habits and attachments are holding your life together? Are you unconsciously dependent on food? Bad relationships? A job that doesn't fulfill you? Numb, constant perusal of your phone, looking for what? I am often interested in social/consumer books about addiction as I work with drug addicts in my role as a pharmacist. 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.Russell Brand talks about this core fear quite often. The fear of being abandoned, left alone and possibly unable to take care of himself. He notes that Step 5, sharing his inventory with another addict, helped him to get over this. Not simply because he got things off his chest, but because someone found his authentic self worthy of both acceptance and understanding. No one likes going through withdrawal or delirium tremens, but it does have the advantage of being easily identifiable. The problem of denial is hopefully easier to confront. If you’re chugging through life in a job you kind of dislike, a relationship that you are detached from, eating to cope, staring at Facebook, smoking and fruitlessly fantasizing, you can sit glumly on that conveyor belt of unconscious discontent until it deposits you in your grave.” 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. Initially, some of his views may seem incompatible with the messages you hear in the rooms. In truth, however, Brand cuts right to the heart of the spirit behind the 12 Steps. Based primarily on principles with only minimal focus on orthodoxy, he presents a program of recovery that anybody can utilize. Below are just a few points of discussion that we found particularly thought-provoking.

All the while I was rattling around on my picaresque excursion, causing damage inside and outside, there was another version of me waiting to be realized. We are, after all, an organic entity, like a tree, with a code stored in our embryonic form that is set to grow to completion. A tree doesn’t face the kind of obstacles a highly socialized mammal does, it might get chopped down, or aggressively pruned or have some wire wrapped round it, but no one is going to say it’s too fat or that it’ll never amount to anything. But in your life you’ve faced obstacles, inner and outer, that have prevented you from becoming the person you were ‘meant to be’ or ‘are capable of being’ and that is what we are going to recover. That’s why we call this process Recovery; we recover the ‘you’ that you were meant to be.”Understanding how certain behaviours and characteristics can affect your life, for example having a big ‘EGO’ will never lead to anything other than inner suffering and misery. AJ Harbinger is one of the world’s top relationship development experts. His company, The Art of Charm, is a leading training facility for top performers that want to overcome social anxiety, develop social capital and build relationships of the highest quality. You need only allow gentle hope to enter your heart. Exhale and allow hope, and give yourself some time. This is a process of change that requires a good deal of self-compassion, which is neither stagnant nor permissive. We can just start by being a little kinder to ourselves and open to the possibility that life doesn’t have to be bloody awful.”