Russell Brand Says His ‘Extreme’ Addiction Could Have Killed Him (Exclusive)
Russell Brand Says His ‘Extreme’ Addiction Could Have Killed Him (Exclusive)
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00 I was thinking about all you were saying about your journey with addiction.
00:03 Yes.
00:03 What stage did it get to? How bad was it?
00:05 It was the dominant and defining part of my life from when I was about,
00:10 you know, from when I was about 16 till when I stopped when I was 27,
00:13 but particularly the last five years, I suppose,
00:16 I was told that if I didn't stop in like the next six months,
00:19 I'd be dead or in prison or in an institution of some kind.
00:24 So it got like quite extreme.
00:26 I think I was a disconnected person,
00:28 like from probably from myself, but probably from other people
00:32 and certainly from any sense of higher purpose or God.
00:35 So how did anything change in your life?
00:38 It took a long while actually, because it wasn't just like...
00:41 When you stop drinking and stop taking drugs,
00:42 you're confronted with the nature of the problem,
00:44 that the problem is feelings of worthlessness and shame and anger
00:49 and loneliness and sadness and fear, all of those things.
00:52 Now you're suddenly living with in a very raw way.
00:56 What I found to be necessary is a sort of a connection to yourself,
00:59 to myself, a connection to other people and a connection to a higher power.
01:02 You sort of missed your childhood, really.
01:04 It's like you had to grow up so fast, but you weren't ready for it.
01:07 Yeah, I think you may be right about that.
01:09 Yeah, my childhood was a little bit erratic and fearful.
01:12 Well, that's not a condemnation of my parents, who did their very best.
01:15 But like subsequently, yeah, I went from childhood
01:18 into the sort of chaos of addiction.
01:20 And then there's a different type of chaos in being famous, really.
01:24 It's a different kind of peculiar world to inhabit.
01:27 (MUSIC)