Russell Brand Quotes

Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users.

It is time to end the discrimination against people who need treatment for chemical addiction. It is time for Congress to deal with our Nation's number one public health problem.

The addict is under compulsion not capable of management without outside help.... If addicts can be punished for their addiction, then the insane can also be punished for their insanity. Each has a disease and each must be treated as a sick person.

I saw people around me who were falling deeper and deeper into alcoholism and substance abuse. It's seductive because alcohol is amazing and drugs are amazing, they work so well.

The war on meth must be fought with a multi-pronged approach.

I work with The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. I sit proudly as one of only two recovering addicts on their board.

Drug abuse is a medical disease that requires medical professionals.

To become a narcotic addict is an anti-social act and the foundation of countermeasures against addiction is to treat and rehabilitate addicts.

Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse - for both the addict and the rest of us.

He's halfway sick and halfway stoned. He'd sure like to kick, but he's too far gone. So they wind him down with methadone.

If I started drinking again, there would be a lot of people bringing me pot because I can't handle alcohol. I just am not a good drinker. I get a little alcohol in me and I start trying to change the world, and that's not good. A lot of people are the same way. So that's why I don't drink anymore.

But I will say that the drugs are much more ferocious then they used to be. There are people wrecking their lives with addiction, which seems much more severe.

Just plain logic says that the war on drugs does not work. It absolutely does not work. We have this highly addictive legal drug called tobacco which has never resulted in people being sent to prison, but there has been a massive reduction in its consumption simply because responsible adults looking at their own bodies have said they don't want to do that to themselves.

The mentality and behavior of drug addicts and alcoholics is wholly irrational until you understand that they are completely powerless over their addiction and unless they have structured help they have no hope.

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

I've been in the music business for 15 years. I've seen it all, man. I've just always been scared of coke. When I was on the road and saw some people do it, I was afraid I would really like it. I was afraid of the consequences.

I have to say that I think maybe they did her a favor, and maybe she'll actually get help. Coffee's one thing, but coke is another. It's not something you want to really have as a problem in your life. I think we have to kind of stop rewarding bad behavior and actually start helping people.

I did mostly alcohol. There were drugs, too - pills - and there was a danger that I would go over the edge. I could have. I thank God I didn't.

I had a 10-year heroin habit and kicked that. Then I became an alcoholic. I drank two fifth's a day.

I knew there was never anyone to blame when people get into drugs. They're always responsible for their own behavior, and it's not the dealer, it's not the friend, it's not the bad influence, it's not the childhood.

The opposite of addiction is human connection. And I think that has massive implications for the war on drugs. The treatment of drug addicts almost everywhere in the world is much closer to Tent City than it is to anything in Portugal. Our laws are built around the belief that drug addicts need to be punished to stop them. But if pain and trauma and isolation cause addiction, then inflicting more pain and trauma and isolation is not going to solve that addiction. It's actually going to deepen it.

I've been a practicing alcoholic and drug addict for most of my life.

We can see in retrospect that criminalizing the consumption of alcohol proves not to be the solution to the very real problem of drunkenness. So to what I want to say is the very real problem of the human susceptibility to addiction isn't best dealt with by building prisons and throwing people into jails.

There's lots of ways people can be dependent, on another person, or drugs.

If you want to get people off drugs, improve reality.