There are many highs in High Risk, Ben Timberlake’s adrenaline-laced memoir of Special Forces soldiering, undercover missions, madcap sexual adventures and messing around with drugs.

This is not the book to read if you want more of what seems to be the standard fare of life coaching or of derring-do's (incidentally, the apostrophe is intended, albeit old-school) that flows from the pens of certain other former Special Forces. Ben Timberlake makes a neurobiological experiment in a laboratory that I’d advise everyone to stay out of—the self. Soldiers traumatised by what they had witnessed at war – and often badly let down by the governments that had sent them there – were finding some relief on the houseboat. like his frequent pauses and almost hesitations as if he's struggling to find the right word, knowing that we all know he's reading from a script.At the beginning the author proudly introduces himself as “an arsehole” which on reflection should have been enough to put me off, but I persisted nevertheless, because of my initial intrigue in the title. High Risk is, in a way, the story of a wicked Mr Hyde inventing a serum to transform himself into a reputable Dr Jekyll.

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. Ben Timberlake makes a neurobiological experiment in a laboratory that I'd advise everyone to stay out of--the self. 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.Funny, chaotic but unexpectedly profound, [ High Risk ] provides not just a clear-eyed memoir of addiction, but an examination of human behaviour and the reasons why some people choose to put themselves in situations that most others would not. The difference between Burroughs Junkie and todays is perhaps the absence then of trying to explain this as some type of pathology or product of trauma and therefore subsequent lack of agency. High Risk is a within-and-without journey that glides between parable, text book and confessional without compromise.

Who dares to explore where angels fear to tread, who dares to dance with devils, and who dares to look unflinchingly in the mirror. We had a rule that we had to do our wraps by 9AM - certainly before noon,” says Timberlake today, in his office on nearby Portobello Road, in Notting Hill. He waltzes into SAS selection with no previous military experience, which you certainly couldn't do in my day. I do not find drugs interesting personally nor the attempts to explain why some people do this to themselves. I guess as I didn’t really get the “laugh out loud humour” mentioned in other reviews, the book just didn’t resonate with me, I felt too far removed from the content to relate to it in any meaningful way.But such is the clarity of the author’s perspective that this part of the journey is less about self-loathing and and the emotional abyss; and more about a sense of identity and a lonely pride that comes with being a truly committed addict. 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. Not far from west London’s iconic River Cafe restaurant, Timberlake’s boat became the meeting place of an unofficial MDMA-fuelled therapy group.

Extremely well written with wonderful passages of descriptive writing, self reflection and black humour. Inspired by a fellow SAS soldier, whose father was a “committed junkie with a three-decade habit”, Timberlake decides to deliberately get himself hooked on heroin, “to touch the bottom of the abyss”. I'm not sure this review is even fair, but I found a lot of Ben's narration techniques to be noticeable and annoying. I guess I am somewhat stupid to think this kind of read could be anything else, but to me it seemed to lack humility and ultimately left me very cold, and a bit bored if I’m honest. Former infantry officer and Times correspondent Antony Loyd fled depression and drug addiction at home to the front lines of Bosnia, witnessing barbaric chaos in what was Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the Second World War.While the American soldiers were initially wide-eyed, having never seen anything like Iraq, Timberlake believes they later evolved into an effective counter insurgency force.