WISE, WITTY, AND RELENTLESSLY REAL STRAIGHT TALK FROM A RECOVERING ADDICT
As Billy Manas can attest, getting sober is easy compared to living sober. But if he can do it, so can you, and he's going to help you with nuts-and bolts suggestions for finding financial, personal, and emotional well-being to live your own version of a kickass life. Billy's techniques for getting there are simple yet profound - tackling manageable goals, finding inspiration (in whatever way works for you), asking for help (even when you don't want to), practicing gratitude and meditation (even if you think they're silly), and steering clear of people who rain on your parade. Straightforward and doable, these strategies build confidence and build on each other until recovery means not just living but living better than ever. Wise, witty, and relentlessly real straight talk from a musician, truck driver, and recovering addict on how to build a kickass life after kicking an addiction Billy Manas is a columnist for Elephant Journal, a contributor to the Good Men Project, a published poet, a truck driver, a father, and a twenty-year veteran singer-songwriter who performs throughout the Hudson Valley. He frequently shares information and insights with addicts at rehabs and jails. He lives in New Paltz, New York. "Billy Manas's debut book, Kickass Recovery, is an authentic and needed testament to the power of recovering out loud. His honest, empowering, and sincere story will surely lead readers to the conclusion that anyone can find purpose through overcoming pain and adversity."
- Ryan Hampton, advocate and author of American Fix: Inside the Opioid Addiction Crisis - and How to End It
"Billy Manas thoughtfully draws from his own powerful story of addiction and recovery to extend encouragement, courage, and hope to others. He compassionately invites readers to remember the context in which addiction happens, and offers an empowering lens through which readers can recognize how the strengths they already possess will serve them well on their journey of recovery."
- Holly Parker, PhD, author of When Reality Bites: How Denial Helps and What to Do When It Hurts
"Billy Manas makes getting clean and sober a helluva lot cooler and more freeing than staying hot and messy any day!"
- Tania Katan, author of Creative Trespassing
"What do you get when you marry powerful memoir with smart self-help? Kickass Recovery! You won't find a better book on how you can create a recovery program that really works than Kickass Recovery. Highly recommended!"
- Eric Maisel, coauthor of Creative Recovery: A Complete Addiction Treatment Program That Uses Your Natural Creativity
"The secret to overcoming addiction is not getting off drugs but staying off drugs and getting a life. This book describes one man's journey to do just that. While Billy Manas's story is unique and personal, the lessons are universal and can be shared. This book suggests that there is power in positive thinking and that life tends to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. But ultimately, it shows that if you want things in your life to turn out differently, you have to do them differently."
- Walter Ling, MD, author of Mastering the Addicted Brain and professor emeritus of psychiatry, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA
"Practical, realistic, thought-provoking, effective, as well as thoroughly 'user friendly' in tone, commentary style, organization and presentation, Kickass Recovery is especially and unreservedly recommended for every professional, health center, community, college and university library Self-Help/Self-Improvement collection for recovering addicts."
- Midwest Book Review
