Into the Soul of the World

My Journey to Healing

By: Brad Wetzler

Narrated by: Andrew Eiden

This powerful memoir shares an adventure journalist’s story of a decade-long, round-the-world quest to overcome his drug addiction and to understand and heal from past traumas.

Suffering from PTSD and severe depression from past trauma, battling an addiction to overprescribed psychiatric medication, and at the rock bottom of his career, journalist Brad Wetzler had nowhere to go. So he set out on a journey to wander and hopefully find himself—and the world—again.

Into the Soul of the World is Wetzler’s thrilling, impactful, and heartrending memoir of healing—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. An adventure journalist at heart, Wetzler mixes travelogue with empowering insights about his inner journey to better care for his own mental health. Journey with him as he travels across Israel and the West Bank, before moving on to India, a candle-lit cave on a mountaintop in the Himalayan foothills, and a life-changing encounter with a 100-year-old yogi.

Wetzler's writing is full of the poignant, amusing, and occasionally heart‑breaking situations that unfold when we finally decide to confront depression (or any mental health struggle) and declare ourselves ready to heal: How do we heal our past and thrive again? What does it mean to live a good life? How can we transform our suffering and serve others? His answer: live to tell the story and find the humility and courage to be the best human you can be.

Critic reviews

"Brad Wetzler is a born storyteller and a true seeker. His beautiful book reads like a trip to hell and back, with glimpses of paradise along the way. Wetzler is willing to climb the mountain, swim the river, crawl into the cave: whatever it takes to get some truth. As a result, Into the Soul of the World is an exhilarating read--an honest record of an adventurous life and a moving window into the soul of a human being."—Clint Willis, journalist, editor, and author of The Boys of Everest

Relatable story for those seeking

I enjoyed this audio book as I had a journey that took me through learning from the very same gurus. Currently with the advent of AI technology the same inquiries on consciousness examined by machines that claim they are close to cracking open consciousness is somehow more exciting. Who is going to wield this power?

Powerfully moving, beautifully written

Brad’s story of personal discovery and transformation was both uniquely riveting and a powerful mirror for anyone who has experienced and overcome trauma. Highly recommend!

Wonderful story well told (and read)

The quest to be fully human may be the hardest one we can embark upon, at least at this point in history. We Americans are steeped in a culture that demands we minimize and paper over our trauma as well as our longing to connect to the universe and to each other. Some of us are allergic to that BS, and we often find ourselves alienated from ourselves, isolated from others, or both.

I'm grateful to Brad Wetzler for telling the story of his journey to find wholeness in a broken culture and healing from a toxic family system. It is not an easy path, and there's no map. It's a true adventure, and that means you don't know what's going to happen, and you have no institutional backing, no prize money, no prestige, no gold stars -- nothing but a faint sense inside yourself to tell you if you're on the right path, going in the right direction.

It's easy to feel alone on this journey, and it's heartening to hear reports from fellow travelers. This is a wonderful book with plenty of external and internal adventures. A life well lived, in spite of a difficult start in life and a culture that too often encourages us to be our worst selves.

I'm hard to please when it comes to narrators, but it was pretty easy to get lost in this story and just enjoy it, without being taken out of it by an iffy reader. Well done all around.