High Risk: A True Story of the SAS, Drugs and Other Bad Behaviour

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A mix Malcolm Gladwell, Anthony Jeselnik, Andy McNab, PG Wodehouse, Jack Reacher, and Frankie Boyle. Dozens of soldiers on their way back from Iraq or Afghanistan would drop in and spend the day getting high with chefs, waitresses, documentary makers and anyone else who happened to be around and at a loose end. Despite my natural cynicism, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and think that Timberlake is a natural gonzo warrior poet. It's difficult to even review, as this was probably the most brutally honest book I have read or listened to at least in a long time.

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.At the heart of Timberlake’s book is the idea of “post-traumatic growth” – that having gone through extreme experiences, people can recover and then grow, finding new reserves of strength and stability following extraordinary trauma. Gunner Timberlake’s friends drop away like scales; ones he’s shed himself because for a while they try to offer help but heroin tells you you don’t need help, only another hit. The guy who wrote this describes himself as an arsehole early on, but even arseholes can be interesting when they're talking about something they have specialist knowledge of which others don't. My other minor gripe is that the SAS (at least in this case) do not seem to know how to pronounce Pen-y-Fan.

Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. It is also beautifully written, the work of a lyrical wordsmith, liberally besmattered with spot-on humour and wry observation, much of it self-deprecating.To me the book became the (very articulate) ramblings of someone who is fully and proudly aware they are a member of a club and an attendee of parties to which 99. Inspired by the skillset of British special forces fighters, he took the Special Air Service (SAS) selection in his late twenties and, against all his expectations, passed. Other than that it's a funny, interesting book with some good material on the effects of chemicals on the brain. One Christmas Eve, while serving with the SAS in Iraq, he doled out Ecstasy pills to some American soldiers and spent the night spraying a 7.

Ben Timberlake makes a neurobiological experiment in a laboratory that I'd advise everyone to stay out of--the self. At several points in the book it gets so bizarre with so many sudden twists it just becomes hard to believe.Its training and shaming and its ever-hovering question: what are you gonna do when you confront life and death at close quarters?

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. Steroids don’t help you fight, they “just make you incredibly fucking aggressive when you shouldn’t be”, says Timberlake. He explains the brain’s workings behind the motivations for his actions and how he and his fellow Special Forces soldiers healed their trauma collectively with the power of storytelling. Ben Timberlake makes a neurobiological experiment in a laboratory that I’d advise everyone to stay out of—the self.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. But most of all he is genuinely funny in a self deprecating way and able to see humour in the most dire situations. Yep… To be honest I did forward thru chapter 9 but for some reason I was drawn to the addiction part.