Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions

by Russell Brand

Because the instinct that drives the compulsion is universal. It is an attempt to solve the problem of disconnection, alienation and tepid despair, because the problem is ultimately ‘being human’ in an environment that is curiously ill-equipped to deal with the challenges that entails. We are all on the addiction scale.

Addiction is when natural biological imperatives, like the need for food, sex, relaxation or status, become prioritized to the point of destructiveness.

What happens when you don’t follow the compulsion? What is on the other side of my need to eat and purge? The only way to find out is to not do it, and that is a novel act of faith.

An integral, unavoidable and in fact one of the best parts of this process is developing a belief in a Higher Power.

Most people in the West belong to a popular cult of individualism and materialism where the pursuit of our trivial, petty desires is a daily ritual.

Curiously, later examination of these principles revealed that self-centred, egotistical thinking is the defining attribute of the addictive condition.

this program will effortlessly form around your flaws and attributes, placing you on the path you were always intended to walk, making you, quite simply, the best version of yourself it is possible to be.

The reason I worked the 12 Steps was because I was desperate. The reason I continue to is because they have awakened me to the impossibility of happiness based on my previous world view: that I am the centre of the world and that what I want is important.

My way of coping with the quiet anxiety of uncertainty was to find distractions and pleasures. I was never still. I was seldom reflective. I sustained myself with distraction.

Step 1 invites us to admit that we are using some external thing, a relationship, a drug or a behaviour as the ‘power’ that makes our life liveable. It asks if this technique is making our life difficult. By admitting we are ‘powerless’ over whatever it is, we are saying we need a new power, that this current source of power is more trouble than it’s worth.

The unmanageability at its heart means that there is a beast in me. It is in me still. I live in negotiation with a shadow side that has to be respected. There is a wound. I believe that this is more than a characteristic of addiction. I think it is a part of being human, to carry a wound, a flaw and again, paradoxically, it is only by accepting it that we can progress.

Pain is a signal, it’s some aspect of us that’s beyond our somewhat narrow conception of ‘self,’ communicating. A pain in the leg means ‘don’t put pressure on this leg’; a pain in the mind means ‘change the way you live’.

My life is about preserving the conditions where it is less likely that I will quantum leap into the other guy.

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.

Being ‘restored to sanity’ we can take to mean that within us there is a version of ourselves waiting to be realized. A better version.

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.

It is commonly understood that the opposite of addiction is connection. That in our addictive behaviours we are trying to achieve the connection.

With this program, with the support of others, and with this mysterious power, this new ability to change, we achieve a new perspective, and a new life.

Why did I choose to live in a punitive version of reality for so long? Because I was unaware that there was a choice and I was unwilling to do the work. But if you think about it any version of a personally authored reality is highly suspect because we are seldom taking into account the cosmic vastness in which we live and the microscopic grace that carries us through life.

I have learned through the process of inventorying that it is possible to intervene in my thinking, that I have a choice. In the past a lustful thought led to a lustful act. In inventorying and sharing I have gained some perspective, my thoughts are in fact the first layer of the ‘outside world’. I am not my thoughts. I observe my thoughts.

In these relationships that are built on mutual vulnerability and a willingness to help one another I am invited into unexplored aspects of myself.

When my disease is on me, the loneliness and hopelessness seem real. One of the first measures I can take to alleviate it is to reach out to another addict. I continue to attend support groups because I need to be constantly reminded that my condition, untreated, leads to very destructive behaviours but more importantly that my feelings of despair are not unique to me and that they are temporary. That I am just another human being dealing with life.

In truth, the part of the step that deserves our focus is the part that we can control, ‘became entirely ready’. Through the process of Steps 4 and 5 we have identified some patterns of behaviour and ways of feeling that are unpleasant and painful. What this step calls for is for us to be ready to change them, to accept that they are not working. This would seem obvious but when I saw the role of the character defect ‘Lust’ in my life I still wasn’t ready to relinquish it. I still sought to justify its presence in my life – ‘It’s natural’, ‘It’s fun’, etc.

No one wants to be miserable but few people are willing to do the work required to enact change.

In justifying our misery we recommit to it.

To see that it is all bullshit and not to clock off, that requires faith. Only faith will do. Only faith. Even if you’re double certain that there is nothing but space and dumb molecules out there, clattering about into symphonic and faraway futures, if you believe that’s all there is and don’t check out, you are hardcore.

That doesn’t mean you have to live as a monk, although that is one way out of it, it just means you can never quench your spiritual craving through material means. Gratitude for where you are and what you have is one important coordinate for retuning our consciousness. Similarly acceptance. We are where we are supposed to be. From this position we can grow, with inner resistance comes tumult.

Mostly we are free-floating and disengaged, lost in the spectacle. When I fixate on the object of my addiction in any given moment, it is because I believe it will give me relief from disconnection. Even if it will ultimately make things worse, I will feel the connection.

Through humility this step bypasses our erroneous and illusory methods for temporary self-salvation and connects us to the truth we have always sought: we are, in fact, connected.

I now acknowledge that I am often wrong in my interpretations of other people’s behaviour and that I am better off not to judge them at all: an approach that would have been inconceivable to the person I used to be, the person I am when not working a program, the person I default to.

Hard recovery means ‘No more bullshit’. No more little kicks and fixes, nothing that can take you away from the connection: the truth; the purpose; the oneness; the moment. It means that this, Recovery, is now the framework for the experience of being you. Not pleasure, or envy, or passing memes and pipedreams, no it is this system, a system that is designed to change your perspective, give you a connection and then a purpose to maintain it.

What I used to think of as happiness was merely distraction from the pain. The pain of disconnection, of separateness from you.

I feel too that in my journey to freedom from active addiction, undertaken basically for selfish reasons, I have inadvertently been connected to this power. I also believe that anyone can do it. That is what is at the heart of this book, that addiction, however severe or mild, is a sincere attempt to address a real problem, the lack of fulfilment to which the material world cannot cater. Therefore the solution to this problem is a spiritual connection.

I don’t know if I’ll ever return to using drugs or drinking or promiscuity or the selfish pursuit of money and reputation but I do know that when I live my life, one day at a time, and follow a simple program I am a more whole and useful man. Part of this program, an integral part, a part that in the pit of my belly, when off-kilter, I seethingly resist, is that I must make myself of use to others.

I feel too that there is hope, that this resource, this Power that is within Nik and Kane, is within us all and if we are willing to let go of old ideas of what life is and what happiness is, a world awaits us that is more beautiful than we have the power to imagine.

Step 12 is a commitment to live in accordance with the Higher Self that we discover while undertaking the preceding steps. We may never be perfect but perfection is our aspiration. To become the most beautiful version of ourselves that we can possibly be. To build a life, a family, a community, a world, on spiritual values.