Q&A with James Brown discussion

Please post all questions/comments on This River here.

At one point in the book, you write about feeling like a hypocrite, as you were still deep in the struggle of your addiction as The Los Angeles Diaries was about to come out. Could you elaborate on that and is this something that still troubles you at all?

Hey Martin,
Yeah, at the end of LAD, I'm supposed to be clean and sober, having made the commitment to finally and "forever" change my ways, but as you know that's not the way it turned out. It used to trouble me, that I'd slipped, and multiple times before collecting years of sobriety, but now I wonder if it wasn't necessary, that maybe I just wasn't ready to get clean yet, that I had to re-learn the lesson I already knew before finally "surrendering," as they call it in A.A. Now I don't think in terms of "forever"; the true alcoholic/addict can never say with one hundred percent certainty that he won't drink or use again, but we can be reasonable and say I won't drink for today. And that's where I leave it.
Hope to see you at the reading at Redlands.

Hey Jim, I enjoyed the reading on Saturday. Has the publisher given you any indication of how the books sales are doing? Just curious.

James wrote: "Hey Martin,
Yeah, at the end of LAD, I'm supposed to be clean and sober, having made the commitment to finally and "forever" change my ways, but as you know that's not the way it turned out. It us..."

You know, Jim..I think that is what drives me crazy about all the programs you see coming out particularly in the Central CA region that are saying they can "cure" alcoholism and drug addiction. I wonder if they know they are setting people up for relapse.

Hey Martin,

I get irritated by those commercials, too, especially that guys selling that book on his "alcoholic cure." You're right, they're setting people up to relapse big time, if once clean and sober they think they're entirely cured.