• 🇬🇧󠁿 🇸🇪 🇿🇦 🇮🇪 🇬🇭 🇩🇪 🇪🇺
    European & African
    Drug Discussion

    Welcome Guest!
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
  • EADD Moderators: Pissed_and_messed | Shinji Ikari

Russell Brand: Addiction is an illness not a crime

I think he's alright. He didn't have to sit in that room and speak for hours on the subject - he could have been off shagging his latest conquest, or rolling around in cash. He even stands to make himself quite unpopular with this, specifically with non-users, so I have respect for the guy.
 
rockstar 69 said:
As always though it will fall on deaf ears. They wouldn't listen to David Nutt, they're not going to listen to Russel Brand.
Click to expand...

That was the first thing I thought when I saw this thread.

33Hz said:
I think you have to be very careful how you word things when it comes to drug related issues. Calling drug addiction an "illness" in itself will probably piss off a lot of non drug users. I've always seen it more as a possible symptom of an underlying mental illness. I think if you present it in that way, as part of a much wider mental health issue instead of its own separate thing then a larger group of people (non drug users) will be able to relate to it and be more compassionate towards the suffers.
Click to expand...

Incredibly good point.


Tbh, I can't even really be bothered following this. I'll keep up to date with this thread but other than that I'm not going to waste my time, it's going to change exactly fuck all.


Edit - Just started watching the actual video. Mad Russell Brand quoting Tupac at a Commons Committee lol. I reckon that went over pretty much everyone's head.
 
Last edited:
I hate him, and he looks like something you find in the plughole when you're living with hippies. He made some reasonably good points but the alleged 'jokes' were disruptive and unfunny and hence he's an awful frontman for this cause.

Charlie put it better, I just wanted to put the boot in. Sus told me to.
 
^ True. The cunt could at least get dressed properly. Even I wouldn't rock up there dressed like that.

I'm only 15 minutes or so into this but I wish they would somehow mention that all drug use isn't drug addiction. All drug use isn't problem drug use. I'm not addicted to taking eccies, my occasional munching of eccies is not a problem to me, my family or society as a whole. It seems to be too focused on "ADDICTION" with no mention of non-problem use.


Edit - Brand touched on my point a little bit at the end by saying some people can take drugs & be fine. Then Peter Hitchens rocked up, had to turn it off after 2 minutes of him & his shout that this country essentially decriminalised drugs years ago. FUCK RIGHT OFF. What FUCKING world do you live in you stupid cunt??? It was almost laptop => window time, so I turned him off. Clueless prick.

It might explain this later in the video but I can't bring myself to watch it. Can someone tell me why Peter Hitchens is even there? Is he not just a journalist? At least Russell Brand had a valid reason (ex-addict now doing work for a drugs charity), what the fuck is this guy's reason for being there? Why is his opinion in any way valid?
 
Last edited:
GPs prescribing what they like doesn't always work out too well. Ask brimz about his long benzo addiction, that his GP started him on. People would be getting addicted to opiates and benzos - left, right, and centre, with a doctor's blessing. Doesn't sound too smart to me. Although, GPs do need to prescribe more than they currently do. There should be a balance.
 
Even though I've been a heroin addict for a number of years I still struggle with addiction being seen as a disease.
If I had never taken heroin then I wouldn't have become an addict so I don't understand how it can be seen as a disease.
 
sockpuppet said:
What a twat....

"Abstinence-based" treatment for chronic opioid dependence has about as much chance of long term success as no treatment at all....It's a fraud.

Methadone has its advantages and disadvantages as a maintenance opioid, as does heroin, but both improve health and reduce mortality dramatically in the chronically opioid addicted whereas "abstinence-based" treatment most often leads to more "abstinence-based" treatment (at ludicrous cost) for each inevitable relapse unto death. There are decades of long term research studies that bear out the truth of this, but science has little to do with UK drug policy or with Russell Brand's opinions on medicine.

The UK had one of the best and smartest systems in the Western world until 1968: Physicians were allowed to prescribe whatever they felt their patient needed. Even until recent years sanity held on in some parts of the UK even as the rest of the world went insane with the US fomented "drug war" and the rise of the "abstinence-based" treatment industry. Now sadly all that is being destroyed and people's lives ruined as they are forced off of opioids. Murdoch and all the rest have won and the UK is in as sorry a state as the US...........

And Russell Brand - despite the fact that he has made me laugh hard - has obviously lost the plot. Probably due to a syndrome induced by withdrawal from Katie Perry's arse. What a schmuck.....:X
Click to expand...

Abstinence has a reasonable amount of success in those who genuinely want to quit. On the other hand over half of all heroin users are on methadone at the same time, so the idea that that works and has gotten more people off heroin is laughable. I think methadone keeps the door open, so it is easier to keep returning to heroin time and time again. Whereas with abstinence you can say that part of my life is over.

Also, GPs are retards. If you end up with a bad one you could end up being over treated or under treated. It's better to leave it in the hand of specialists.
 
maxalfie said:
Even though I've been a heroin addict for a number of years I still struggle with addiction being seen as a disease.
If I had never taken heroin then I wouldn't have become an addict so I don't understand how it can be seen as a disease.
Click to expand...

Agreed. That's why I thought 33hz's point was a good one. It's more of a symptom than an illness.
 
All you need for an addiction to form is that the drug works every day, and you have a regular supply, voila. The withdrawal does make heroin/alcohol/benzos particularly nasty to stop. I always thought growing up that it was the 3 days of hell that stopped people quitting, but now I realise most addicts have been through this process loads of times. It's filling the gap afterwards, or resolving the problems that started the use.
 
If addiction is an illness how come people only get sick when they stop taking stuff?

If it's a disease, how is it transmitted?

If it's a crime, who is the victim?

It's a choice. An option. Just one that doesn't fit in with current hysterical anti-drug ideology.

Just say no to Orwellian newspeak.
 
Very elequent and intelligent Brand. Apart from the shit jokes.

Shame that the old fucking terts in suits wont listen to any of it.
 
They briefly touched on the people forced to work in the cocaine trade. I'd say that's the only sort of crime being committed - one which the government could change overnight, if stuff was regulated. Our government is just adding to the misery of those people. The end-user will normally not care about such issues, especially with an addiction, because it should be legal.
 
"Mr Brand.........we do not want to turn this into a tv show"

Brand:- "Well you look like you were in Dads Army!"





He's still a knob.
 
IMO, there's some truth in what he says, that said one size doesn't fit all, and imo for a treatment to work it needs to be tailored to that individual and that person needs to be in total control of their treatment be it tapering/reduction, rehab, and just because one way worked for him it doesn't mean it'll suit everyone. i was going to say that my concern is that people will listen to him and think he's right (or maybe they won't), i feel myself getting cross... Anyway the government has decided which way to treat people and that's abstinence focused...
 
Last edited:
Yeah, but he's Russell Brand, isn't he? He could give me one anytime .....

Not that I expect the government to take a blind bit of notice of a word he says, mind. They have already made their minds up. Russell Brand is just being wheeled out for show. Enough people will object just to his very nature for the government to be able to claim popular support to reject whatever Brand says. A combination of argumentum ad populam and argumentum ad hominem, if you like.

Plus, it's Russell Brand, for crying out loud. Remember him and Noel Fielding on Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2007? Now, that's a threesome I'd be up for .....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top