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.” Do we really overcome addiction, or is it an ongoing struggle that requires constant attention and maintenance?

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) Both our forgiveness and our amends serve to benefit us immensely. On the subject of forgiveness, Russell Brand writes:

Addiction is when natural biological imperatives, like the need for food, sex, relaxation or status, become prioritised to the point of destructiveness. It is exacerbated by a culture that understandably exploits this mechanic as it's a damn good way to sell Mars bars and Toyotas.”

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.” 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 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 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.”

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. 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.”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.) This is where I open myself up for criticism. I accept that the 12 step program does help many. I know a few people who are clean and sober exclusively due to it. I also know many more who have tried it and it has not worked. Even Russell talks about it as a cult. A helpful cult to many but one that has its own ingrained problems. It is not the only way to maintain sobriety.