Russell Brand Quotes

I think a lot of people are scared, and I know I was scared to get sober, at least using this as an excuse; 'I don't want to be one of those sober people.' And I don't think you have to be. I think you can be one of those people who happens to be sober.

Actually, I used to think that it was normal to feel bad, like, Doesn't everybody feel like this? It was only when my drinking really got out of control that people went, 'Troy, you need to see somebody.'

If a child had another disease, we'd be open about what we were going through, but addiction is stigmatised and comes with shame and guilt.

I'm calling for a cultural change in how we think about addiction. For far too long people have thought about addiction as a character flaw or a moral failing.

I mean, for years [my father] would been doing everything imaginable ... from speed to downers to you name it. I used to call that "changing seats on the Titanic," and I used to say that I myself was not only changing seats on the Titanic but dating the crew.

I was struggling with drugs, I had a lot on my plate, and you know, I was using unhealthy ways to kind of self-medicate and deal with a lot of heavy duty stuff in my life.

There comes a time in every man's life when he wakes up drunk on the toilet and begins to doubt the choices he has made. and when that time comes at least twice a day, every day. something needs to be done.

I was on drugs when I wrote some of my songs. It was a rough time for me, but I'm lucky enough to be one of the people who learned from that experience and moved on, where other people just got addicted and more addicted and more addicted until it killed them.

Addiction is not just for bad people or scumbags - it's a universal disease.

But my activities have been pretty much focused in the last almost 30 years on the recovery, of my own recovery, the understanding for my family of my recovery.

I was always playing the hard-bitten drunk.

When I got sober, that was 1990.

I have a lot of friends who are trying to clean up their act, or that are still making trouble for themselves, so I'm definitely well-versed on what goes on in the mind and the heart of a person who self-destructs as their coping mechanism, and also what they're like when you take their preferred substance away.

You can't drown yourself in drink. I've tried, you float.

One of the cruelest judgments sustained against me is that I have spoken out as a recovered alcoholic to stimulate my acting career.

It's so weird that I went to rehab. I always said that I would die before I went to rehab. But I thought, 'I'm going to stay here tonight.' And I stayed there for a month. It was great.

Trying to overcome addiction is one of the hardest things for a person to do. And the fact that I had to do it under the scrutiny of tabloid press at first made it seem even more difficult. But in fact, it oddly ended up being a plus. Because of the tabloid stuff, it wasn't like I could walk into a bar and order a drink.

I took a bottle of pills. I'd been in Europe and I had a lot of absinthe and I was just drinking and drinking, trying to, you know, just shut my body down.

There are zillions of people who say that alcoholism is a disease, but not many of them believe it.

When the addict gets recovery, his family gets recovery, right?

I have been sober for the longest time. Oh, it's over a decade now. No joke.

The thing is, if I don't have sobriety, I don't have anything.

I used to have a drug problem, now I make enough money.

My dad was the town drunk. Most of the time that's not so bad; but New York City?

Jimi was a good guy 'til he got into drugs. That's the way it is. I just tell it like it is.