Comedian and actor Russell Brand will be the subject of an upcoming BBC Three documentary entitled ‘Russell Brand: From Addiction To Recovery’. In the special ‘The Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ star will discuss his past drug abuse and addiction, allowing the network to air a scene where he uses heroin in a homemade video made when he was in his twenties. As confirmed by Huffington Post, Brand shares in one clip that he is surprisingly jealous of his old self in the video. “This is when you know it’s a disease. It doesn’t matter that I was sat in that flat in Hackney and now I’m in the Savoy. I’m jealous of me then. It doesn’t make a difference to me. The money, the fame, the power, the sex, the women – none of it. I’d rather be a drug addict.”
Now clean and sober, Brand has been reportedly attending AA meetings three times a week to maintain his sobriety. The actor who is constantly making headlines for his antics and off color comments has also been shedding light on how we as a society look at drug addiction. Appearing before Parliament back in April to speak about the U.K’s drug policy, Brand made his case as an advocate of treating individuals with an addiction as more of a terminal illness. “By regarding addiction as an illness, by offering treatment instead of a more punitive approach, we can prevent people from committing crimes. Personally, I was a criminal when I was a drug addict by virtue of my addiction and the ways that I had to acquire money to get drugs.” The Russell Brand drug addiction documentary will debut on August 16th.
