The part of the story that I enjoyed the most was his describing of the flow state and even some of his descriptions of getting high and his withdrawal. In a supreme effort to stop he spends 3 years living in virtual isolation on a Scottish islet, the whole back to nature thing, beautifully described but still gets his smack sent from London! I know it's a technique, but I would rather him find a different one that allows the story to flow a little more naturally instead of the silent um that I heard so often in this. I do not find drugs interesting personally nor the attempts to explain why some people do this to themselves. The first thing I can think of is Pain and Gain, an equally wacky but wholly compelling story of nonfiction that makes you doubt what you are seeing, or hearing in this case.

a smorgasbord of fascinating topics told in a laugh out loud style mixed with genuinely moving prose. When I say obsessive, I mean an almost autistic fascination by the author in drugs and bio-chemical processes that left me baffled for the most part. Together, they share their uncompromising personal accounts of embracing fear and choosing to live life at the very extreme, revealing what happens when you’re taken over the edge.Drugs – both in and out of combat - form a key part of Timberlake’s newly published memoir, High Risk, which tells the story of a life spent pursuing extremes.

Yep… To be honest I did forward thru chapter 9 but for some reason I was drawn to the addiction part. Despite my natural cynicism, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and think that Timberlake is a natural gonzo warrior poet. The author is very open right from the beginning - he told us what to expect, what not to expect, and that he’s an asshole. While publisher after publisher wanted him to tell an Andy McNab style story of hard men at war, Timberlake went his own way, writing a book that is as profound as it is eye-popping. Growing up in London, the son of an American journalist, Timberlake went to the Yugoslav war aged 18, where he was almost executed in a bar by a leader of the HVO, a Croat paramilitary full of Nazis.This book will become a classic of the genre and should be read by anyone with an interest in risk, war, drugs, addiction, belief, re-wiring the mind, how the mind works under stress, deeply embedded psychological pain and the points where those areas intersect. According to the book’s cover blurb, Ben Timberlake has been an archaeologist, Special Forces soldier (21 SAS), combat medic and drug addict.

You suddenly become aware you’re reading something important; a thing that every man should see, a thing whose power and gravitas are grounded in a brutal honesty that you haven’t heard before. Eventually, after a sojourn in Norwich as he reaches rock bottom he ends up on his ramshackle yacht in a Cornish creek (hey, he earned it, don’t knock him for that! It left me reeling - unsettled and relieved - and just as the author shared his experience in living this extraordinary life, so I can but share my experience in reading about it. That said I fully respect the incredible job that the armed and special forces undertake on our behalf, and am in total admiration of the author as a soldier. The whole thing about PTSD is it’s a cluster of horrible symptoms that revolve around a traumatic episode – or episodes.S Army sponsors (COIN specialists Travis Patriquin and Megan McClung) are killed the day before his arrival, which maybe accounts for how he ends up on a roof in Ramadi with a bunch of young US Marines dropping ecstasy on Christmas eve, and another where he is chased, high on crack cocaine, through an unnamed middle eastern town by an angry crowd of locals. Starting with Ben's first near-death experience--in a Nazi-themed bar in wartime Yugoslavia-- High Risk is a whirlwind tour of everything from service in the SAS, combat in Iraq, and encounters with a gambling-obsessed 9/11 hijacker, to veterans blissed out on MDMA, hook-ups in the world of extreme sex, and battling a heroin habit on a remote Scottish island. In High Risk, former Special Forces soldier Ben Timberlake charts his extraordinary life: pursuing the rush, he takes us from combat in Iraq to encounters with a 9/11 hijacker, to battling a heroin habit on a remote island. In the honeybee (Apis mellifera), it has been demonstrated that, even if the absolute neural representation of an odor in the primary olfactory center, the antennal. High Risk is, in a way, the story of a wicked Mr Hyde inventing a serum to transform himself into a reputable Dr Jekyll.