I applaud anybody who can use a 12 step program to both get and maintain sobriety (note: I will use sober in this review to mean free from addiction. I will use it to mean not using or doing a destructive behaviour that a person is addicted to.) I will add that my own experience (and those I have been around) have included variable results with them. Yes, people made mistakes but that’s what humans do and I am under no obligation to hoard these errors and allow them to clutter my perception of the present.” Because he's who he is, all of this is done is simple, amusing, and straight forward language. He titled it Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions. I would call it Recovery: Lose all the Bullshit. There's a clear plan to follow, 12 well worn steps that have worked the world over. That's not to say it would be easy to go this route, getting to the end of this path would mean dealing with some issues not everyone might be ready to face about themselves, but at least now they might be able to see how it could be approached and where to go for help. It's a starting point. Becoming Flawsome | Kristina Mand-Lakhian Interview | The Key to Living a Imperfectly Authentic Life 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)

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?’ In today’s episode, we cover self-mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais. Michael is one of the world’s top high performance psychologistsAll 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.” In today’s episode, we cover building relationships with Geoffrey Cohen, Dr Carole Robin, Colin Coggins and Garrett Brown, David Siegel, I've never been a huge fan of Russell Brand, but even before reading this I thought it was pretty fair to say he's someone who just might have something to offer on the subject of addiction. Actually, I was surprised by just how disarming his honesty was in the book, the level of brutal self-reflection he achieves in his writing here, and clearly in his path to coping with various addictions, was both moving and inspiring. It's not easy taking a long hard look at yourself, at the choices that you've made and the inner workings of your mind; and not just looking but seeing what and why and how and then maybe, just maybe, having the strength and courage to change yourself.

Listen to this episode of The Art of Charm in its entirety to learn more about how Russell handles his addiction to social media, why you have to be willing to confront pain to grow, what addiction wants, why confession is a tradition that works, patterns Russell identifies within himself and how he works to break their hold on him, what’s involved in the amends process, what the secular world can learn from religion, why Russell has been a vegetarian since age fourteen, why Russell has waited until now to write this book, how Russell has acted as a tool of reconciliation for Jordan, and much more. When is it that you’re going to be who you actually are?” says Russell. “I know people that I feel, that when they are on their deathbed, are going to go, ‘This isn’t who I was!’ This is, in a way, a sort of awakening tool — an awakening system or code…most people don’t engage until crises.” The condition in extreme is identifiable but the less obvious version of addiction is still painful and arguably worse because we simply adapt to living in pain.”To restate this relationship between the external and internal, our behaviors stem from our beliefs. Addiction represents the abandonment of those beliefs, or perhaps the failure to see them realized in the first place. We achieve recovery by reclaiming those beliefs, and bringing them to the surface through our actions.

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. 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. If we all feel we are alone then how alone are we? If we all feel worthless then who is the currency of our worth being measured against?”From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Starts with Us and It Ends with Us, a novel about risking everything for love—and finding your heart somewhere between the truth and lies.