Billy Manas

Author

Billy Manas

Billy Manas is the author of Kickass Recovery: From Your First Year Clean to the Life of Your Dreams (New World Library, 2020) and the creator of the weekly Substack newsletter Manas From Heaven. His writing has appeared in Elephant Journal, Good Men Project, YourTango, and other publications.

As a recovery advocate with over two decades of lived experience, Billy regularly shares insights and resources with people in treatment centers and...

Billy's Substack

Kickass Recovery

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....

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Praise

I am a Drug & Alcohol Counselor in Los Angeles. I happened to go to Barnes and Nobel and stumbled across this book. I write this review because Billy captures many facets of recovery that 12 step and treatment programs leave out. And yes… true recovery (in my opinion) is more than just AA/NA. Don’t get me wrong - I am in AA and it has helped me a tremendous amount.

However, this book outlines a game plan on how to change the trajectory of your life AND your recovery - guiding both towards the positive/momentous direction they should have. I read a lot of books on recovery/self help/spirituality/law of attraction and this stands out because Billy has consolidated (a million nuggets)…..knowledge that has taken years to accumulate from various sources and put it into one convenient place.

The content is masterfully woven together in a way that makes sense/flows well. If you have a few months of recovery or a few years of recovery this book can still help you a tremendous amount. I am sober - I plan to encourage my sponsees to also read the book.

While reading the book take the time to answer the questions that he poses in a thoughtful way. He helps you to strategically plan your recovery while simultaneously channeling the law of attraction. Haha! I may have gone overboard on that last sentence…but not really. :)

Seriously though the book has genuinely helped me. It doesn’t have a lot of stilted or technical jargon either.

Thanks Billy!

– Drug Counselor Los Angeles, CA

You know that saying "You had me at hello?" That's what came to mind when I started to write a review for this book. I opened it up to start reading, and I did not want to put it down. I finished it in a day because it is real, full of inspiring messages and has an overall positive spin on recovery. I am not a recovering addict, but I believe we can all benefit from learning about it, because like it or not, addiction is a part of us. We all know someone who struggles. I love the way he wrote his story and I hope I inspire many others to read this book! You will want to share it with your friends when you're finished, promise.

– Julie Moore

I'm biased because I was already a fan of Billy Manas, having read his work on the Elephant Journal and I bought this book even though I've never had a 'classic' addiction. However I learned so much from it that I can't recommend it enough. I have a long history of dieting and this book was so packed with wisdom and encouragement and Billy's beautiful wisdom that I walked away feeling like all really is well in the world. I truly believe Billy can change the world with his unique voice and I'll basically read anything he writes. Highly Highly recommended!

– DanniBella

Blog

December 6, 2025

The Excruciating Pain of Creating Art

I think I gave my finished and polished manuscript for We Are Stardust to about a dozen people and aside from my aunt and my friend Jann (who reads everything I write, God bless her kind heart) no one finished it and told me what they thought. The silence, as the cliche goes, was deafening.

My aunt told me it sucked.

Well, to be literal, she said it was sad and she couldn’t relate to any of the characters.

In other words, it sucked.

I’m kind of angry that I paid someone to developmentally edit a...