What It Was Like When I Hit Rock Bottom | Russell Brand

what were the final days of drug addiction like for me what was my rock bottom like most people have been drug addicts will tell you that there are interludes periods maybe even entire narratives that feel kind of exciting i had to look back at some of my written material books and stuff to remind me of the atmosphere of addiction because now with one day at a time god willing almost 18 years clean i feel so ensconced in the spiritual life that's about letting go not only of substance dependency but various forms of behavioral addiction and also let's face it the ego itself i don't mean obviously i don't have an ego it would be preposterous to say that wouldn't it while sitting here in a waistcoat and this little neck achieved thing what i mean to say is that i recognize my ego as a fragment of my whole beingness not the dominant force in my life over the course of any day i'm likely to slip up but what i say is that i've got a place to return to a place that is uh not predicated by my wants preferences needs dislikes this is done with a in my case a great deal of practice and assistance and help now like i had a pretty uh typical addiction journey like i was like started by smoking graphs and hashes was very popular at that time and immediately full on embraced the identity of a drug addict with zeal and enthusiasm i think because i was in a great deal of spiritual pain loneliness despair and worthlessness as the great eckhart tolle says addiction begins with pain and addiction ends with pain that's the cycle of it and i suppose like many people with addiction issues this there was sort of like the purpose that i now sort of recognize has been a kind of a spiritual impulse a yearning for connection oneness transcendence call it what you will in a sort of working in tandem with this self-destructive impulse perhaps recovery comes when these two things can align and weave together into a single thread for you to walk i.e the self-destructiveness of a drug addict could be regarded as an unconscious and and uh not theologically sanctioned attempt to annihilate the persona to experience the freeness of liberated awareness i.e not continually existing through the filters of the perceived self but like when you're just a junkie that's obviously not how it feels yeah now i feel like these two these two forces these two sources are somewhat in alignment they are not two at all in fact they are one there's something very particular about the secondary worlds of drug addiction like houses that are essentially crack houses where all that's happening is drugs are being dealt from that place i remember one place in particular with a person in bed and people collapsed in corridors and hanging out and using there and feeling pretty scared and brittle and exposed because i guess one of the perhaps the peak of my using was where i was working on mtv so i was earning really good money i saw i'd get like 500 quid a show but i was deteriorating mentally this was a time that was very ripped in stories like you know sort of running out of the studio and jumping up and down on the boss's car and being all crazy and stealing the riders of artists when i was doing mtv festivals um and i suppose most notoriously uh i believe the day after 9 11 dressing up as osama bin laden and interviewing kylie minogue i guess the footage must be out there somewhere and i and taking my drug dealer and his kid to work with me that day so i'm a co-dependent person meaning that meaning that i have a tendency to blur the boundaries in relationships and as a drug addict that was no less evident in my character and i suppose the drug dealer gritty to give him his name was someone i saw most days and i remember meeting him and his kid and going yeah yeah come come into mtv with me i got properly waisted and high and we'll just wore a camo jacket a tunic thing that i've got from around bethnal green i think i put on some sort of turban and maybe a fake beard it was a pretty insane thing to do in retrospect and even really at the time as i've often said with the addition of significant amounts of stimulants and opiates that your ability to make decisions is uh if not impeded certainly altered and you know really that time was like full of like real sort of giddy stupid anecdote or madness like the the that business there or waking up in a room full of like refugees and not knowing how i got there and getting arrested and finding myself in cell lots of like absolute insanity and madness because i suppose i was trying to elevate myself beyond the feelings of you know fear and pain the moment when it sort of got our hand was when i got a court using a sort of a remember i was on the outskirts of show business then and i was at like my agency that looked after me had a party and there was sort of like people off the telly there and i was using heroin in the toilet with a homeless guy and that's when people started to ask questions about the nature of my drug use and i got like i met someone who said like a 12 step sort of authority an expert got assessed found out about my drug use and then it was i've had to sort of look at what what is your plan for life most people like in addiction even if it's not as an extreme form of addiction as crack and heroin and mine you know it would have got a lot worse it was only really sort of a three-year period where it was getting really dicey but just about you know having said that the drinking and the weed and the recreational drug use was getting me into a lot of trouble even before that the absolute pinnacle of it was a moment where i was told i was going to be going into a treatment center you're going into a treatment center i said my then manager the patriarchal force that he was you're going in a treatment and i didn't what wanna and it was december and i looked out the window and saw the branches of this tree and a sparse grey camden town sky bleak low hanging split by the twigs of this tree and felt the feeling for the first time ever i suppose you don't have to take drugs every day because my life has been defined by addiction it was defined by addiction when i was a kid defined by addiction when i'm an adult it's still defined by addiction now as a matter of fact because the rubric for my sanity and my ongoing spiritual spiritual development is built around abstinence from drugs behaviors thoughts that lead me back to it that that lead me back to destructive behavior destructive thinking destructive beliefs the end of it like even after that moment though i went out and went to a place called bartok in chalk farm road and waited for gritty there i remember calling my mate g who used to do the radio show with and saying i'm going into a treatment center going into a treatment scene i was scared i got i hung out with my mate carl that night and his girlfriend karen at the time just using all time then i went back to my flat i lived in spittlefields in east london i was not paying the rent on that flat and somehow they'd not noticed i wasn't paying the rent because i've been there about six months and i played the rent and just well this will just go on forever i'll just live in this place got annihilated sat in front of the tv using woke up and i'd missed the train i was meant to take to go to berries and edmonds to the treatment center where i was going then eventually you know sort of made my way there and different friends of mine martino god rest his soul he was even there g matt morgan sharon like came and visited me in that treatment center and i sort of emaciated into the kind of it's a kind of crystallization going into treatment like a lot of you dies and fades and withers and you're exposed with the pain you're exposed to the pain that you have been trying to avoid i remember the last night of the using very very clearly sort of dolefully telling the drug dealer like me i'm going into a treatment center in the treatment center martino got rested sold deleting the drug dealers from my phone meeting other people that were clean going to 12-step groups hearing about the nature of a step one the list all the times your drug using has caused you problems has caused you to behave in ways that you regret has been has created chaos in your life that you have continued to act in this way even in spite of it being evident that you you can't handle it all this sort of flood this flood of confronting my childhood confronting my pain something that any ad any addict or alcoholic has to go through or indeed anybody that's interested in a path of change that you have to look back go back and see what it is why you have formulated the person you are and the strategies you have and as i've often said if your strategies are obviously problematic like chemical dependency it's sort of easier if you have sanctioned addictions like spending too much money getting in negative harmful relationships thinking negative crazy stuff being online all the time you can carry on for a long long while i know that because subsequent to my what is known as my primary addiction chemical dependency i went through food and sexual behavioral addictions that are just as painful in their own way because in a sense there is a yearning that drives addiction as i have said to you frequently what does the wanting want what is it when are you going to be happy when are you going to arrive at this place that you've been pursuing either through passion or passivity when are you going to arrive there there is something just beneath the grid of behaviors the equations that make up the self just beyond it there is a second observing mind that can be experienced it can only be experienced though when you issue the strategies that are preventing you from having that realization you are lucky if it's stuff that you can identify can't be in this type of relationship i can't behave in this kind of way i can't eat this type of food i can't do this now how am i going to get support in sustaining this because you know loads of us have had those realizations then returned to it i tried to give up drugs prior to that time when i was sent away i went down to a cottage with again martino and my then girlfriend amanda from barcelona this phenomenon of a human being that i was wildly in love with then and sat and watched alan bennett videos and smoked loads of dope and drank loads of whiskey and clucked it out and rattled and sweated it away you know and it lasted for a few weeks until until that relationship went wrong with amanda because of my conduct obviously and obviously but actually and then straight back straight back to the brown and the white straight back to those relationships straight back to those streets straight back to the ancillary streets off brick lane where there's a second world a second world of drugs the accreted layers of culture unseen unless you need to belong to them of dealers and runners and kids on bikes and blokes in cars pulling over on corners and making quick exchanges taking things out their cheeks maybe it don't go on like that no more drugs are different like spice and bags of mad things that can mess you up that can be made at home with bathroom products god help the addicts of today god help the kids that have got addiction issues now when they can order stuff on their phone or they can lose themselves in porn god help them and i mean that literally god help them because i suppose my own solution that has been given to me freely has been a spiritual one and all the things i was looking for in those mad rolling cyclonic days have been found and some measure of i wouldn't say normal but reality has been found an acceptance of reality relationships with people that are real an opportunity to atone for the past to be of service in the present and hopefully ongoing in the future to be a part of the recovery of many many many people hope this video was useful to you and to some degree i hope it was amusing and entertaining and there were bits before me strung together a good sense there uh subscribe to this if you're watching it on youtube and if you're not then uh well i suppose you're free to do whatever the hell you like with your time

Channel: Russell Brand

Views: 552,529

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Keywords: Russell Brand, Brand Russell, BrandThe, Russell Brand video, Russell Brand news, Russell Brand revolution, russell brand drugs, russell brand drug addiction, russel brand, russell brand addiction, russell brand recovery, how to stop drinking, how to quit alcohol, russell brand interview, spirituality, rehab, rock bottom, mental health help, how to give up alcohol, how to give up smoking

Id: PG6JP12OMPM

Length: 12min 37sec (757 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020