RUSSELL BRAND FROM ADDICTION TO RECOVERY

Russell Brand: From Addiction to Recovery BBC 3 Thursday 16th August 2012

All recovering addicts and alcoholics imagine that their own recovery is unique, which is true, and that their own drinking, using and recovery is uniquely interesting, which is not. Moreover every drug user and alcoholic in recovery also believes that their own life experience makes them an expert on addiction, bearing a weight of knowledge that no mere professional could hope to possess. This in turn can produce the phenomenon of ‘recovery evangelism,’ a phenomenon manifested particularly, though not exclusively, by those who are in the early phase of recovery. Thus we have the spectacle of the over-excited Russell Brand taunting a doctor with what he believes to be the killer question/statement, “but you’ve never taken drugs have you?”[1] Whilst on Newsnight we are subjected to the Brand/Hitchens circus, one unbalanced comedian challenging an equally unbalanced journalist.[2] That such a serious subject as drug policy is discussed in this extraordinarily vacous manner speaks volumes for the current degree of cerebration attendant on such debates.

The reality is that most peoples stories of their drinking and drug taking are ineffably tedious, as indeed is the attendant philosophising and the brisk and sweeping prescriptions proposed for anyone else experiencing problems of addiction and dependency.The truth is that problems of alcoholism and drug addiction are in reality highly complex, involving psycho-dynamic, social and biological factors and are not given to easy solutions and a one size fits all policy approach, be it abstinence or harm reduction. I have worked with both models and seen that treatment provision requires a considerable degree of flexibility and imagination in whatever treatment model you are providing.
Behind Mr Brand’s enthusiasm of course lurks the certainties and ideological fervour of the 12-step worldview; it is a world view characterised by a Manichean mindset, 100% abstinence or nothing. The great evildoers are those who propose harm minimisation, the use of methadone or other substitute prescribing or who explore options around controlled use/drinking.
Now I have to make a somewhat dismal confession, I myself have had a lifelong problem of alcohol dependence, dealt with for the great majority of my life by abstinence from alcohol and, in the jargon, all other ‘mood altering substances.’ I was active in Alcoholics Anonymous [AA] for over 18yrs and, as can be seen from the brief biographical sketch above, a professional working in the field of addiction from 1984 until 2010.
So with respect to AA I think a little throat clearing, as Christopher Hitchens would frame it, is in order. In many respects AA is a truly remarkable phenomenon, I would say organisation but this would be to misrepresent the reality on the ground, for AA, and Narcotics Anonymous [NA], are nothing more than a loose affiliation of groups meeting 365 days a year across this country and a great many others, particularly the US. They are bound together by nothing more than a set of basic principles, one of which, ‘our leaders are but trusted servants they do not govern,’[3] was particularly close to my own heart. In theory AA is a prime example of anarchy in action, according to the rules of our hierarchical society it ought not to work, but it does. At its best AA can be democratic, open minded, generous and imaginative, I spent many years thriving in ‘the rooms.’[4] At its worst it is little more than a cult.
The meetings I started attending over thirty years ago were genuinely democratic in spirit, open to sceptical thinking and able to accommodate a highly sceptical agnostic like myself. I suspect, given the nature of AA, such meetings do still exist but they are increasingly rare; in their place are forums for indoctrination and brainwashing in a religiously based philosophy of anti-intellectual submission to a deity called The Higher Power.[5] Salvation is to be found in the open confessional[6] of meetings and in submitting completely to the twelve steps of recovery as outlined in the AA literature.[7] 
The process of my own growing alienation with AA does not represent a particularly gripping tale; suffice to say that I found less and less room for people like my self, happy with the camaraderie of AA and the space to explore my own thinking[8] about recovery but ill at ease with the ‘programme’ and the excessive religiosity. There were also other forces at work in my life. Having reached, what felt like the peak of my career, I was becoming increasingly restless and ill at ease with my self.

However back to the proselytizing Mr Brand who is passionately convinced that the 12 step way is the only way and anyone who suggests otherwise is talking hogwash; throw away your crutches shouts Mr Brand, or at least flush your methadone down the toilet.
Now I am not particularly passionate about the use of methadone and happen to believe that it is too often over relied upon, harm minimisation becoming little more than an absence of creative thinking about addiction and recovery. However from 2002 until to 2004 I managed a range of harm minimisation services in one of the larger and more deprived London boroughs, including a methadone prescribing clinic. It was there that I witnessed many extraordinarily damaged individuals who were gently steered away from criminality and chaos by being placed on a carefully monitored methadone script, in some cases it literally saved their lives. As I say a serious debate about the place of substitute prescribing in the treatment spectrum and of treatment options as a whole is needed. However Mr Brand’s hysteria does not advance this and I fear may do more damage than he realises as he is used by the punitive anti-drug lobby as a weapon to attack harm minimisation models.[9] Reckless over reliance on methadone as a response to drug dependency is as irresponsible as removing substitute prescribing altogether, or as wrong headed as the mantra sometimes heard that abstinence is a wholly unrealistic treatment goal, setting patients/clients up to fail.

I have nothing against Mr Brand, he can be funny and is in many ways an attractive personality; the programme was serious and raised serious issues, though ducked the whole 12-step aspect of the abstinence model that Brand is advocating;[10] it is possible that I have been unfair to him, though I can’t help feeling that his overblown engagement with the drug policy debate, well intentioned as it is, risks further exacerbating a polarisation that already exists.

AFTERWORD DECEMBER 2014

Since I wrote this piece in 2012 Russell Brand has sought to adopt the role of saviour to the marginalised and dispossessed, my view of Mr Brand has consequently ceased to be so benign. 

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[1] The absurdity of this argument is exposed if one imagines someone diagnosed with cancer challenging their oncologist, “but you’ve never had cancer, what do you know?”

[2] Mr Brand appeared with his mentor/counsellor Chip. I knew Chip in the mid 1990’s when we both worked in therapeutic treatment centres. I remember him being very charming if somewhat evangelical about recovery even then.

[3] All AA ‘offices’ e.g. Group Secretary, are elected.

[4] That is. meetings/groups, AA is, like all organisational phenomenon is given to develop its own language

[5] The concept of God as presented in  AA  takes on absurd solipsistic overtones, your invisible friend, who whatever limited concerns he might have for the people of besieged Aleppo, draught ridden areas of the horn of Africa or slums of Rio always has time for you. It is of course represents something of a modern reaction to the sadistic, jealous and capricious God of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, but is, if such a thing were possible, even sillier. 

[6] Our current dismal confessional culture, the culture of Oprah Winfrey, Jeremy Kyle the grotesque parade of the maladjusted washing their dirty underwear in the confessional of the TV studio owes more to the 12 step programmes than is often realised.

[7] Including the Orwellian sounding Big Book, the foundation stone of AA.

[8] A no no word in AA.  I was amused to see on the wall behind Brand the grotesque phrase ‘Don’t think, feel!’ Surely if there ever was a phrase that summoned up the empty headed morass of the confessional culture it is this.

[9] There is much in AA philosophy that appeals to the right of the political spectrum, not least being its provision costs the state nothing.  The role of 12 step culture and American politics is an area ripe for exploration.

[10] For reasons embedded in the 12 step philosophy advocating anonymity, though this was something of a slight of hand and dodged some of the more profound problems attached to twelve step abstinence based treatment.

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