Beth Burgess – Addiction Recovery & Mental Health Expert

I’m honoured to share the news that one of my quotations is due to appear in Tiny Buddha’s 2023 calendar.

I’ve written a few articles for Tiny Buddha and the lovely founder Lori Deschene let me know that she wanted to use some advice from my piece ‘8 Things to Do If You Want to Be at Peace with Yourself‘.

I love Tiny Buddha and what makes it so fab is that the writers share personal stories and learnings from their own lives, something I have always tried to do in my books and articles. I find it helps my readers connect and find hope even if they’re in pretty a dark place.

I believe tips that come from lived experience and overcoming struggles are often more effective and meaningful than advice only based on “book-learning”. The focus on real experiences in Tiny Buddha results in writing that is authentic, actionable, and cliche-free. So, I’m really excited about the forthcoming calendar.

Of course, you don’t have to wait until 2023 to start finding peace of mind. Here is my quotation:

“Other people around you may not be living in the same way that you have chosen to. It doesn’t matter; they will have their conscience to live with at the end of the day, and you will have yours. Choose to respond in a way that will give you peace of mind. Take a deep breath before reacting to people who push your buttons.” – Beth Burgess

Keeping my own conscience clear is a code I started living by as soon as I got sober. As a terminal “reactor”, I worked hard to learn to breathe and respond wisely rather than do something daft, which was previously my default. As I continue on my recovery journey, I’ve found that the above advice keeps me safe, sane, and relatively serene.

Tiny Buddha’s 2023 calendar includes daily inspirational quotes to help you stay grounded throughout the year. Themes include happiness, relationships, change, meaning, mindfulness, self-care, and more.

If you want one to pop on your desk or coffee table, or to buy as a gift, the calendar is available from 23rd August 2022, but you can pre-order it now.

I’ve recorded some brand new guided meditations to help you cope with lockdown, which you can access totally free.

Lockdown is the perfect time to begin, or strengthen, a meditation practice. In this challenging period, you may be experiencing feelings of uncertainty, isolation, frustration, boredom, anger, and destabilisation. Since there is little we can do about the pandemic except stay safe, the one thing we should focus on is what we can control: our mental and emotional responses.

Lockdown provides you with an excellent opportunity to work on training your mind and using it to help you de-stress. The mind is the best coping tool we have because it is always with us – even in lockdown.

If your mind has been going crazy with unhelpful thoughts and panicky feelings, you might disagree with how helpful the mind actually is. But this is where practising meditation can come to the rescue. Guided meditation is especially useful if your brain is going loop-the-loop because another voice providing some instruction can help you focus better.

The three meditations are designed to calm and soothe you, to help you sleep, and to cultivate states of mind that will help you deal with difficulties. They are all available for free on a meditation app called Insight Timer. I’ll get into the meditations and what they help with below.

Click on the title to go directly to the meditation. If you don’t have the app, you may only be taken to a preview. So, y’know, get the app. It’s free!

Breaktime Relaxation (15 mins)

If you’re stuck indoors and the kids are going crazy, or if you’re driving yourself mad with stressful thoughts, take a break with me. For 15 minutes, you can totally let go and relax. In this meditation, we will relax the body and quiet the mind by travelling into nature.

After listening to this meditation track, I hope you will feel calm and grounded. It’s a nice, simple mediation that is suitable for both beginners and experienced meditators.

Breathing The Brahma Viharas (45 mins)

The Brahma Viharas are what Buddhists call the four sublime states. They are beneficial states of mind that help us to deal with life skillfully and consist of: Loving-kindness, equanimity, sympathetic joy, and compassion.

You don’t have to be a Buddhist to do this meditation. And you don’t have to be interested in Buddhism to know that kindness and compassion can help you to feel better.

In this meditation, we use personal mental imagery and breathwork to cultivate these helpful states in the brain and body. It’s simpler than it sounds and I’m with you every step of the way.

Sleepy Yoga Nidra (30 mins)

I came across Yoga Nidra when I had insomnia. I was gobsmacked to find that just listening to a Yoga Nidra recording had the power to knock me out when three Nytol and a Horlicks hadn’t touched the sides.

I researched the practice and found that Yoga Nidra mimics a state close to the one we approach when we fall asleep naturally. In fact, Yoga Nidra means “Yogic Sleep”. I now do Yoga Nidra whenever I struggle to sleep or if I just feel the need for rejuvenation. And now I’ve recorded my very own version.

Yoga Nidra is really easy. You just follow the instructions and come into a state of deep relaxation. Use it at bedtime for sleep or during the day to rest and restore the body and the mind.

I will be recording more meditations, so if you enjoy these, you can follow me on Insight Timer. Just download the app, go to my page, and click follow.

If you’re going to start, start right. I don’t know who said that, nor if anyone actually did, but it’s great advice. And it leads me nicely onto another quotation, which you may recognise if you’ve read my book ‘Instant Wisdom: 10 Easy Ways to Get Smart Fast’.

“Socrates was famous for a few things: sporting an astonishingly curly beard, rarely bothering with footwear, pondering, and stopping total strangers in the street to quiz them on their beliefs.”

This quotation was selected by Publishers Weekly for their monthly best ‘first lines’ feature, where they give a nod to creative indie authors’ book beginnings.

It’s an honour to have my line chosen by the top international book trade magazine, which has been running since 1872. Mind you, Socrates was around before paper was even invented.

I’d not heard of the ‘First Lines’ competition until recently, but I understand why it’s a “thing”. Every book has to capture your attention quickly in today’s marketplace. Potential readers don’t have much free time.

Thanks to Amazon’s “Read Sample” feature, browsers can check out the first few pages to see whether or not they should bother investing time and money in a book.

I’m sure we can all recall a few of our favourite first lines.

Mine include: 

“It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” – George Orwell, 1984

 

“First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.” – Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

 

“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.” – Samuel Beckett, Murphy

My favourite first lines all score points for subversive humour, originality, and piquing interest.

If you’d like to read the other five first lines that were featured, along with mine, pick up a copy of Publishers Weekly dated 28 October 2019.

You can buy Instant Wisdom on Amazon or order it from all good bookstores.

If there was a free indie review service where the reviewer offered to buy your book from Amazon, review it fairly, then broadcast the results to hundreds of thousands of book-hungry followers, with absolutely no catch, would you submit?

I did. That’s how I got my latest 5-star review for ‘Instant Wisdom: 10 Easy Ways to Get Smart Fast’.

To celebrate, I’m going to share with you the awesome free service I used.

Indie authors often struggle to get quality reviews, especially if their books are not well-known enough to get organic traction. While I am known for my books on addiction recovery, the Wiseism series I am writing is brand new.

So you can imagine how happy I was to find an award-winning review service catering to indie authors whose books have fewer than 15 Amazon reviews.

Indies Helping Indies Book Review Project (IHIBRP) is run by author JB Richards, or Jeannie, as I have come to know this rather wonderful human. She set up the project to give back to the indie community after the support she received for her novels and short stories.

Jeannie has won multiple awards for both her writing and her positive work promoting other independent authors. She’s won the prestigious Golden Quill and the Inspiring Muse Award, among many others.

If your book is accepted into IHIBRP, Jeannie will buy your book, personally read it, and post her review on Amazon, Goodreads, Bookbub, Facebook, and Twitter. All you have to do is submit your book.

There must be a catch, right? Um, no. This is precisely how I got my review and can proudly share my IHIBRP 5-Star Recommended Read Award Badge. All I had to do was write the best book I could, follow the guidelines and submit my book.

I hope it goes without saying that you should only submit quality work. Not all books will get a great review. IHIBRP is wonderful, but not magic. You will receive a genuine review by a human being.

Now onto why I wanted to write an article about IHIBRP and Jeannie. Although it’s lovely to be able to post another “I got a 5-star review” article, I wanted to take Jeannie’s lead and pay it both back and forward by sharing this valuable service with the indie community.

My whole experience with Jeannie and IHIBRP has been fantastic. I want other indie authors to benefit and I also want to show my gratitude to Jeannie herself.

Here is a little of what IHIBRP had to say about my book:

“Time and again, Burgess hits the mark through her keen observations and amusing interpretations in demonstrating how failure can be turned into success.”

If you want to read the full review for ‘Instant Wisdom’, do so here.

If you want to submit your book to IHIBRP, the guidelines are here. Please follow the rules. There is a real (and lovely) human on the end of them.

If you get a glowing review, share about IHIBRP. This service only exists due to positive people like Jeannie in the indie community wanting to help others. Be one of those positive people too.

I have been incredibly lucky to receive some amazing reviews for my latest book “Instant Wisdom”. And here we go again! This time, I am utterly honoured to receive a 5-star review from Readers’ Favorite, one of the largest book review and award contest sites on the Internet.

Readers’ Favorite have earned the respect of renowned publishers like Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Harper Collins, and have received the “Best Websites for Authors” and “Honoring Excellence” awards from the Association of Independent Authors.

They are also fully accredited by the BBB (A+ rating), which is a rarity among Book Review and Book Award Contest companies.

So, here follows their press release about my book. 

(And special thanks to Jack Magnus for reviewing the book.)

Author’s new book receives a warm literary welcome

Readers’ Favorite announces the review of the Non-Fiction – Self Help book “Instant Wisdom” by Beth Burgess, currently available at Amazon.

Reviewed By Jack Magnus for Readers’ Favorite

“Instant Wisdom: 10 Easy Ways To Get Smart Fast is a nonfiction self-help book written by Beth Burgess, a therapist, coach, and author. She’s also the founder of Wiseism.com, a site designed to assist people who want to enrich their lives through amping up their own natural smarts.

As a new adult, Burgess had to cope with a crippling anxiety disorder she developed in her mid-teens. Self-medicating with alcohol and the resulting poor decisions she was making along the way made life even more difficult. Then she resolved to change things, to begin using her native intelligence to make changes, to solve problems rather than find ways around them.

Her research drove her to learn about other cultures and philosophies, to find techniques that may seem marvelous and fantastic — except they actually do work.

This is a well-written and insightful look at things people can do right now to make their brains work for them. The author’s down-to-earth approach is a welcome change from those books which promise you riches beyond compare through directed meditation and money mantras.

As a long-term bodybuilder and weight trainer, I was already quite familiar with the concept of visualization in turning the most challenging lifts into movements that are easily accomplished. Burgess explains the basis behind this phenomena and goes on to produce backed studies that show how even the simple act of visualizing an exercise can actually result in improved fitness in the involved area. While not a replacement for that jog in the park or those 40 laps in the pool, the idea that seeing and visualizing those activities can make a positive effect on your health was fascinating indeed.

With each page of this perceptive, frank and illuminating book, I did become quite a bit wiser and more aware of how much more there is to know. Instant Wisdom: 10 Easy Ways To Get Smart Fast is most highly recommended.”

You can learn more about Beth Burgess and “Instant Wisdom” at https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/instant-wisdom where you can read reviews and the author’s biography, as well as connect with the author directly or through their website and social media pages.

Readers’ Favorite LLC
Media Relations
Louisville, KY 40202
800-RF-REVIEW
https://readersfavorite.com

The Happy Addict made it to the Best Drug Addiction Books of All Time.

I’m delighted to announce that my book, ‘The Happy Addict: How to be Happy in Recovery from Alcoholism or Drug Addiction’, has just won an award!

It was named one of BookAuthority’s Best Drug Addiction Books of All Time.

Books by Russell Brand, Noah Levine, Dr Gabor Mate, James Frey, Carlton Erickson Ph.D and Mackenzie Phillips joined mine on the list of the 42 Best Drug Addiction Books of All Time, so I’m in pretty good company!

And it’s not one of those “fake awards” that you pay to enter or receive your award. I didn’t even know I’d won until I was notified.

BookAuthority collects and ranks the best books in the world, based on dozens of different signals, including public mentions, recommendations, ratings, sentiment, popularity and sales history. The website has been featured on CNN, Forbes and Inc.

People who recommended books for the list included Demi Lovato and James Altucher.

It really is humbling to get this kind of recognition. After all, I’m just a recovering alcoholic who wanted to help others find a recovery as happy as mine has been.

But it’s also an honour to know that my book has touched and helped so many people.

If you’ve ever bought, recommended or rated ‘The Happy Addict’, then you are a huge part of this wonderful achievement, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support.

If you haven’t yet read the book, you can order it from most bookstores or buy it online at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

As always, big love, and a huge thank you!

Beth 🙂

There are so many categories that it is like Wonderland trying to navigate the British Medical Association Book Awards.

That is not a bad thing – it’s important to cover podiatry to psychiatry. I am all for better health for all.

That said, we were delighted to learn that ‘Addiction & Choice’ was highly commended by the British Medical Association and shortlisted for the Book of the Year award in the ‘Public Health’ category.

Addiction and Choice: Rethinking the Relationship
Nick Heather and Gabriel Segal—Oxford University Press, September 2016. ISBN: 9780198727224.

The collection of authors who contributed, including Segal, Heather and other luminaries in the field, reflect an understanding of addiction on various physiological, medical, psychological and philosophical levels.

I am proud to have written two chapters myself, as both an addict, a therapist and someone who want to fight addiction stigma.

So, we didn’t win. But Highly Commended ain’t that bad.

And I’ve had great feedback from readers.

I’d recommend anyone who wants to learn more about addiction to read “Addiction and Choice: Rethinking the Relationship”.

I don’t get money for it, but I sure get satisfaction from knowing just one more person in the world is educated about addiction and all its facets.

You can get the US version here

And your UK copy here

I finally got around to recording The Recovery Formula: An Addict’s Guide to Getting Clean & Sober Forever in audio book form. And yes, I narrated it myself.

You will soon be able to buy the book in a wide array of online stores (stay tuned!), but for now, you can get it on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes.

If you’re from the UK, you can check out a free sample and all the details on Amazon/Audible here

While my US friends can check out a free sample and all the details on Amazon/Audible here

The pages include how to buy it, or how to get it for free if you decide to trial out Audible.

Please feel free to leave me a review if you like it.

I’d love to record The Happy Addict for you next, but it’s jam-packed with exercises, so I’ll have to think about how that would work…

Big love, Beth

Do you think there is no life after addiction? That you’re not capable of going on and creating a successful, fulfilling life?

If you’re stuck in that hole of believing that sobriety is boring or that no-one will want you to do important things because of how badly you screwed up before, then let this be a little story to inspire you.

I was someone who had more things wrong with me than were right with me. Since my teens, I had been an alcoholic, bulimic, self-harming, depressed, borderline personality-disordered, anxiety-disordered mess. I spent a long time dragging myself from one chaotic situation to another in despair and attempting suicide in between.

After a lot of suffering and a lot of hard work and help, I entered recovery from all those things, one by one.

I’m now 35 and was appointed as the Chair of a rather special charity this year. I have been with DiversityInCare as a regular member of the Board of Trustees for a while, but in 2015, I was asked to step up and take over as Chair.

DiversityInCare works with people who wish to overcome a wide range of issues associated with drug and or alcohol addiction. Its CEO recognised that my past experience was an asset, not something to hold me back or distrust me for.

The charity helps people who have been involved in criminal behaviour or domestic violence due to an addiction, and those who have shaky mental health. I had experience of all these situations.

A Chair is someone who ensures that an organisation is running smoothly and ethically and providing the service it was set up for. Who better than someone who has been on the other end of services to make sure that we are running the charity in a way that safeguards our clients’ welfare and progress?

DiversityInCare is a national charity, but its activities are currently based in London. One of the things that attracted me to the charity was that it offered an individualised plan for service users, tailored to their needs. That is something that I find especially important, since everyone has their own journey to recovery, so it’s a really exciting charity to work with.

So whether you’re just beginning your recovery journey, contemplating what might be possible in sobriety, or are letting your self-esteem hamper your success, remember you are capable of whatever you set your mind to.

In fact, if you’re in recovery now, then you’ve already succeeded in winning one of the greatest battles there is. Don’t be afraid of being able to build a fun and fulfilling future. You can, as long as you think you can.

Social care charities could always use some passionate, savvy volunteers, fundraisers and trustees who understand the world of addiction, so if you’re up for a New Years challenge, why not join me as part of a team making a real difference to the world because of what we’ve been through, not in spite of it.

Most people don’t live wisely. I know this because I used to be one of those people.

Most people go through life without ever stopping to ponder whether or not what they are doing is actually getting them what they want and need.

The majority of people react to life rather than responding to it, meaning they don’t take the time to stop and think about what they are doing or where they are headed, what mistakes they keep repeating, or how to really make the best decisions for themselves.

As someone with a previous diagnosis of Borderline Personlity Disorder, I was certainly living my life that way for a long time. And as someone who turned to alcohol to deal with a crippling anxiety disorder, I was also guilty of not using real wisdom to solve my problems. It was a case of grasping onto what seemed to work without considering the bigger picture or any alternative ways out of my problems. Thankfully, I learnt what I had to, and now enjoy a much better life.

After recovering, I changed my career, and as a therapist and author specialising in addictions and mental health, I now help people make healthy, wise choices.

Many people with these sorts of problems enjoy my books, articles and videos and find great benefit from my 1:1 work.

But over the last year, I found that I was sending chapters from The Happy Addict (my book about becoming happy after suffering from an addiction) to people who had never been addicts, because there was so much advice and many tools in those pages that would apply to their lives, too.

More and more people told me that parts of The Happy Addict helped them, even though they weren’t addicts and they asked me to write a more mainstream book that everyone could use. So I am working on a less niche book at the moment, which I hope will be accessible for anyone who wants to improve their life.

But in the meantime, I decided to start a brand new website where people from all walks of life can access a little wisdom to help them live life more wisely, happily, and healthily. I know that wisdom changed my own life and I hope it can help you change yours.

The new site is called ‘Wiseism’, and you can take a look at it here: Wiseism.com.

I don’t claim to know everything, but I am someone who has gathered a lot of wisdom – in the first place I had to do it to help me sort out my own life and now I still seek wisdom to help me do my job better as well as continue my growth as a person. As the site evolves, I hope to invite others to post their own pearls of wisdom on the site.

For now, thank you to all who have given me wisdom, and to those that have made me learn a little bit more to help them out of their own pain.

Peace, love, and wisdom. That’s where you find freedom. Thanks for reading and enjoy the new website.

Alkie. Waster. General pain-in-the-bum. Those were among the things you could quite reasonably have called me in the past. Role model? No, not really. But if you buy this week’s Woman’s Own, you will find me in the magazine’s regular Role Model section.

I was kindly nominated by drug and alcohol charity DiversityInCare as a role model to others – for being a fighter, overcoming my issues, and speaking out about my recovery from addiction and mental health issues in an attempt to give hope to others.

In the January 14th 2013 issue, Angela Edmondson, CEO of DiversityInCare, shares my story of how I overcame addiction, Borderline Personality Disorder, bulimia, social phobia, and self-harm, and went on to help others and support her charity with its brilliant work helping vulnerable addicts.

It’s a really good read and I hope it will help to break the stigma that still exists against people who are battling addiction and other mental health problems. And of course, give other people hope that it is possible to recover and rebuild an amazing life after addiction.

The magazine is out on 6th January so grab your copy now.

Special thanks to freelance journalist and writer Rachel Toal for making the publication of the story possible.

I am delighted to announce that I have accepted an invitation to become a member of the Board of Trustees for DiversityInCare Ltd.

DiversityInCare is a charity which works with people who wish to overcome a wide range of issues associated with drug and or alcohol abuse.

The charity provides services for ex-offenders, domestic violence, vulnerable families, drug addiction, alcohol addiction and mental health issues across London.

It’s a great charity, has an amazing success rate with vulnerable clients, and is supported by Russell Brand and Judge Nicholas Crichton at the Family Drug and Alcohol Court.

In my new role, I hope to bring my own experience of living with addiction and its associated issues as well as my experience working with people with multiple issues within my own service.

I also hope the charity will benefit from my experience being at the frontline of other drug and alcohol services, and their day-to-day running, as well as my work achieving positive outcomes for clients, partners. and commissioners.

If you’d like to meet me or the other trustees and find out what DiversityInCare is all about, do come to our Christmas Dinner at Cinnamon Kitchen on December 16th.

Your ticket will help to support vulnerable young women, who want to turn their lives around, and their children. It will be a lot of fun and there will be a chance to win some amazing prizes as well as supporting a great cause.

I don’t know how, but Mark Leigh managed to get a world exclusive out of me when I spoke to him for an interview with addiction recovery website in-recovery.com recently.

Not only that but he got me to agree to write a few words of inspiration to help those who may be struggling with addiction at the moment. Of course, I am grateful to be able to help others and was more than happy to oblige.

If you’d like to check out my interview with Mark, have a listen here. There may or may not be breaking news about new books I am planning (shhhh!) and ways to stop boredom ruining your recovery. You can also read my message to fellow addicts here.

In-recovery.com is a website designed to raise awareness of addiction and recovery and well worth a look if you think you might have a problem. Big thanks to Mark for all his hard work and dedication to the cause.

If there’s anything better for the spirit than Mindfulness Meditation, it might be giving away Mindfulness Meditation MP3s for free!

I am lucky enough to have come across Mindfulness Practice and Meditation many years ago, when it was introduced to me by an Alcohol Counsellor.

Back in those days, Mindfulness wasn’t really used very much for addictions and mental health, but my Counsellor was way ahead of the game.

Mindfulness is one of the core aspects of Buddhism and of Dialectical Behvaiour Therapy, which I now teach and use with clients. It has been found to be very useful in treating people with addictions, personality disorders, and even common complaints such as stress.

I sometimes conduct quick Mindfulness exercises in client sessions, but I am often asked if I offer any recordings so that people can download them and use them at home, too. Well now I do!

I now have a selection of Mindfulness Meditations on Insight Timer, ranging from a quick 6-minute guided focus on the breath to a 30-minute relaxing body scan.

I will be adding to the collection as time goes on, but for now follow the link below to enjoy your free Mindfulness meditations.

Free Mindfulness MP3s

My forthcoming book The Happy Addict: How to be Happy in Recovery from Alcoholism or Drug Addiction is now available to pre-order on Amazon.co.uk.

The book is out on July 3rd, but you can reserve your copy now by clicking through the link above. The book has just popped into existence on Amazon.com too. Get The Happy Addict in the US here.

The book does exactly what it says on the tin – it will help you to change your thinking, so that you can build on your sobriety and create a life full of happiness and positivity in recovery.

If you haven’t yet got a handle on the basics of sobriety, or you find that you’re relapsing, check out the prequel, The Recovery Formula. You can order it now on all the international Amazon pages, as well as on Kindle.

I’m really excited about the new book and I hope you will find it a valuable addition to your recovery.