Actor and comedian Russell Brand has battled drug addiction, waged war against groupthink, and pushed the envelope as a free thinker. And he has praised God for helping him through his most challenging times.
“Like many desperate people, I need spirituality,” he continued. “I need God, or I cannot cope in this world. I need to believe in the best in people.”
“I need to believe that there are new alliances possible, new ways of us communicating, because I see atrophying and corrupt systems delivering yet more misery to people, and I think it’s increasingly necessary that we find new ways of framing the conversation and looking into our hearts when we’re speaking.”
Brand discussed the need for change, for people to self-assess their intentions as they interact with others, and to overcome the issues creating society’s problems in order to facilitate the necessary change.
“Are we being kind? Are we being loving? Are we being the best that we can be? On whose behalf are we speaking? And what is my intention, moment to moment? Am I doing this for self-glorification? Am I doing this because I have obligations to rumble the platform I’m on? Or am I doing this because I genuinely believe that a better world is possible and that world is born individually within each of us, moment to moment? And it’s possible to change?”
“I genuinely believe in change,” he said.
Brand is optimistic about the future but seeks to find common ground among our differences.
“I’m optimistic about your country, and I’m optimistic about mine, and I’m optimistic about the world,” he said. “But I think the price of that optimism is a certain degree of reason and an acceptance that many people see the world very, very, differently.”
The 47-year-old free-thinker told Carlson he keeps the company of others who are recovering for the sake of his own “wellness,” “spiritual well-being,” and growth from his time as a drug addict to now, focusing on a philosophy of self-improvement, kindness, and acceptance of others and their opinions.
“In a way, I’ve simply remained connected to the conditions I’m from. I’m a recovering alcoholic and drug addict … and so that means that, wherever I go, I have to spend time among other people in recovery for my own wellness, for my own spiritual well-being,” he said.
“As much as I might enjoy the feeling of privilege and luxury … I remember what reality is. I remember that my wellness is contingent upon spiritual connection, upon certain values and principles, and they involve sacrifice and self-scrutiny about my own conduct and behavior, which often falls short, and I’m working on improving myself,” he added.
Brand criticized the pharmaceutical industry and modern science for contributing to drug dependency and offering allegedly harmful medicines for profit, tying in the allusion that corporations boast more authority than the government itself and that both used the COVID-19 pandemic to “opportunistically” enhance regulation and control over others.
“I think COVID provided a lens through which we could scrutinize the machinery of power and how the intentions and the agenda of power are able to play out, coalesce and conspire when a crisis occurs,” he said.
Brand also talked at length about his transformation as a free-thinker, and the outrage that ensued following a decade-old interview with English journalist Jeremy Paxman, in which he claimed the “liberal establishment” slammed him with attacks.
“I feel pretty committed to what I’m doing now. I never felt like I’m in alignment with my beliefs and principles in the way that I do right now … I believe in truth and freedom and the ability to express yourself,” he said.
“Because what I have been taught and shown is that it is impossible for a person like me to not drink and use drugs unless I have sufficient ongoing support from people that understand what it’s like to feel that drugs or alcohol, or, you know, certain behaviors are necessary in order to feel OK,” he said at the time of his anniversary.
