 Congrats on the book launch, by the way. Not your first book, but still a big deal. Yeah, I'm very happy with this particular book. I'm proud of it. I love it. And the thing is, is because the program in it, the system in it, that's not invented by me. So you don't have to worry because I'm potentially an idiot. I could come up with all sorts of mad ideas. But the program is, it endures. The program is like 100 years old. The 12-step program primarily invented to help people with serious chemical dependency issues in your country, America, 100 years ago, nearly. I think the principles within it are applicable to all forms of attachment. And I think that it can be nothing less in the right context than a kind of secular religion. Most people that get involved with 12-step programs go, oh, wow, everyone should be doing this. This is because like, of course, once you yourself have got rid of drugs and alcohol one day at a time, you start to realize that drugs and alcohol were never the problem. The problem was your own emotional state, your own reaction to the world. So you have to start working on them. And the 12-step works on them. In fact, that's the function of it. The first thing you do, if you're with drugs or alcohol, you stop taking drugs, you know, if it's food, you have a structured way of doing it. Then you start following these steps. And it's about inventorying yourself. It's about treating people differently. It's a complete tool for transition. It sounds like a self-help program that you only get to when you have seriously run out of options, which is a problem. Because it seems like you should be working on that stuff before you run into the problems themselves. That's exactly right. It's like that I wouldn't have done a 12-step program were it not for the fact that I was on the precipice of serious mental health and criminal judicial issues. But the problems that I had prior to becoming a drug addict were continual. The way that I related to food, the way that I related and used TV was all problematic. And that's exactly it. Why wait for crisis? Or like your life may not provide you with crisis, you might be someone that's just coping, being in crap jobs, crap relationships, not really happy. It takes as its premise, but quite a simple notion, that you deserve to be happy in inverted commons, content, free from pain, free from suffering. Which I suppose again is the foundational point of all religions. Like right your ear, you're going to die. Do you want some sort of system? Or are you going to just try and cope with it through masturbation and buying stuff? Oh, try masturbation and buying stuff. Oh, see you at the death bed. The reason the book starts with talking about death is because one of the sort of visceral things that I feel is that a lot of people you meet in the world, and even people in my family, I think, when is it that you're going to be who you actually are? I know people that I feel that when they are on their death bed, they're going to go, this isn't who I was, ah, bye. Right. And then after all that. Yeah. So this is in a way a sort of an awakening tool, I guess, or an awakening system or code. But as you said, Jordan, most people don't engage with it until crisis. Why do you think that is? I mean, when you were growing up, when you were looking at the problems that you were, I guess, experiencing, why do you think people look to one thing and not the other? Why do you think people look to substances instead of working on the problem in a way that's, is it because it's harder? Is that it? Is it that simple? My personal theory is that it's to do with our way of life. Like that we live in a system that tells you you can make yourself feel better by getting stuff, by buying stuff, by doing stuff. And there is almost no way that it's presented to you in ordinary and realistic terms to deal with your inner life. Why do people drink? I'm not even talking about people with drink problems, anybody. They drink because they want to feel good. They want to go out on a Friday or a Saturday and feel good. Well, there should be other ways of feeling good. Feeling good shouldn't be something that needs to be facilitated by an external agent. It should be something that you have an ongoing relationship with. The reason I think the world is like it is because I feel that we have quite a deep and all-encompassing capitalist consumer system and we can't see the edges of it. We are all within it. We think about life in those terms. You think about life as a commodity. Is it worth doing it? Look at the bees that we're talking about already. You have the bees in order to get the honey. The idea of just have the bees, that's not, you're not commodifying it. We default to commodification. So I think that creates a mindset in us that we are looking to consume, always looking to acquire. And these are not original ideas. They're relatively like I suppose when, what's his name, Guy Debord, a French situation he says, that we live in a spectacle. We are losing our contact with reality. We are living in an externalised way. That when you're at work, you're engaged in your profession or whatever your job is. And when you get home, you're a consumer. Sit and watch that TV, buy stuff. And now people carry their advertising devices in the palm of their hand. In fact, what they do is we work in a form of media, which means that's bloody useful to us. It's not all bad. But for a lot of people, I think the reason that we have excessive drug addiction, excessive alcoholism, food issues is because people are constantly reaching for something external that's already in them. And do you think it's that people don't know how to get that out of themselves, or they don't know that it's there at all? They don't. I think that all of us, as an addict, I feel like it's the drive is slightly stronger. That I think a person that develops chemical dependency issues develops them because they are not happy. They're like, oh no, is this life? I'm going to die. I'm expected to, this is school, is it? Well, this is family life. Well, this isn't going to work. You better give me something else. Because the world tells you, well, it's going to be outside of you. And no one tells you, no one's giving you ideas of prayer, meditation, solitude, serenity, excuse that noise, maybe Charlie will grab that. Then you look to resolve it using some external agent or method. And I think that the people that are in recovery groups have found a different way of dealing with their feelings. It seems like this started pretty early for you. I had a question before, how do you get addicted to eBay? But I assume it was just like every day looking for something new on eBay? Why eBay and not Amazon, for example? I've never personally had those kind of addictions because more of me would be social media, say like tech stuff. What I mean is, I think addiction is something that you do a lot. It's not good for you. You don't want to do it and you can't stop compulsion. Compulsion and obsession, I think are two of the ingredients of addiction. Now, if your obsession and compulsion is about a substance, it gets bad fast. And if it's about behavior, you can carry it on longer. So no, I don't have, like I put on their sort of social media and stuff because I do notice that I stare at my phone a lot and I often don't feel better after looking at Twitter for ages. Twitter will definitely not make you feel better. That's out of all of the social media. Twitter will make you feel the worst, the quickest because it seems so anonymous and so easy. And so it's quick. It's kind of like every time you go out there, you get those little jabs. Whereas on Instagram, you know, you're looking at them, they're looking at you. Most of the profiles aren't anonymous on Facebook, for example. So Twitter is just like, for me, that's, it's useful and yet a cesspool at the same time. Well, it's a useful cesspool. It's a bare pit. Yeah, a bare pit. Yeah. Do you find yourself still using social, is there any healthy balance for you? Social media is good, but I have to cap myself in half an hour or are you just like, I can't look at this at all anymore? I think like with the sub-chemical dependency, abstinence is what I believe in. If you're a drug addict, you cannot take drugs one day at a time. If you're alcoholic, can't take drugs. Food gambling and gambling, I think you can't gamble. But like food and sex, these are life-giving things. They're natural things. We have to find a structured way. And I would say that social media belongs in that category. So me personally, I don't anymore have my Twitter password, someone that I've worked with does that. So I'll go up here as a photograph and a thing and maybe once in a while they'll tell me some stuff that's going on on there, or Facebook. I've never had it, so I don't know how to, I can look at my Facebook page, but I can't go in it or, you know what I mean. So with Instagram, I post stuff, because I've always, I'm a sensitive person and I'll get too affected by it, even negatively or positively. I would say if you can have, if you, like one thing, it's that you went right, I'm only going to use social media for half an hour a day between 4.30 and 5. That's when I understood social media. And then if you try and do it and you can't, it's like, well, there you go. You've learned something about yourself. You aren't capable of keeping it to half an hour. So that tells you you're not in control of it anymore. So that's, you know, in a way, step one, you've got to then admit you've got a problem with social media. It seems tough to admit you're addicted to something because it's obvious when it's cocaine. It's obvious when it's alcohol, maybe not for a lot of folks, but it can be. But when it's computers, social media, or shopping, it's really easy to couch or sex. It's easy to couch that in something else, especially for somebody who is well known to the world to realize they're addicted to sex and not just having fun. Do you remember that process? Because at some point you must have been like, this is awesome. Every woman that I fancy I can go after and get, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And then at some point you must have gone, actually, this is really bad for my emotional well-being. I was aware that it was probably, like, I'm quite, God, addiction is a bit of a blind spot for me, sort of, oddly. Because I sometimes think I'm clever, but then sometimes it's revealed to me that I'm not because my behaviour is so dumb. So with sex, it's interesting because I feel like, well, I'm an adult, I'm attracted to adults, in my case of the opposite sex, adult, even females, it's all pretty vanilla and innocuous. And when I first got famous, it was like, I felt like I was addressing the previous circumstance of not feeling good enough, not feeling attractive, trying to address that. It was so exciting and felt kind of validating. And of course, sex is fun anyway. I mean, that's the point of it. So it does take a while. I suppose, you know, using the model that I've just said, you're doing it, it becomes problematic, you can't stop it. Well, it becomes problematic when you think, oh, I might like to be in a relationship with one person now, and you try, and then you sort of can't. Because, one, I think people that have a lot of sex with strangers often find intimacy with one person challenging. That's something true in my case. Is it because you're spreading it out thin instead of going deep? Yeah, that's a really simple way of putting it. I think it is that. And I think that intimacy with a stranger, for most people I know they've had issues around sex, intimacy with a stranger is kind of lovely. You don't know them, and then you have that sudden excitement of sex, and you're kind of connected to them in that context. And it's not with, you know, there's this joke about it, it's just like, I can have sex with a stranger because I'm not thinking about any other information in that person's life. I'm not thinking, oh no, her brother's got diabetes. Oh, she might be worried about this. What if that happened? No, they only exist in that context. In a way, there's something spiritual about it. You're in the moment. There's no judgment. The connection is very pure. It's the type of stuff that I was into at least. And then, but like after a while, I think that that means that when you do know somebody, it seems almost absurd to sort of be intimate with them and the kind of physical proximity and the frequency of sex. I've had to learn, like, you know, like a lot of people my age and God knows what it's like if you're younger. Pornography is what I learned sex from. I don't know what taught me, all right, this is what it is to be a man, and if you're into women, this is what women are like, or if you're into men, this is what men are like, and this is how we treat each other, and this is what it should feel like, and this helps be loving. It was just like, yeah, look at these magazines, look at these videos, and it was about, I don't know, you know pornography. So it's not a very good template, really. That problem must be so much worse now. I think about this probably more than I need to, but when you and I were kids, you had to find the, you had to find a kid who had the magazines, and you might have been the kid who had the magazines. I was, I had a neighbor who had those, and then maybe when I was 14 or something or 12, one guy had a tape that he had stolen from his uncle or something like that, but nobody, you need to wait, your mom's not home, and you know she's going to be gone for two hours, and your buddy comes over, and he's ready to, you know, get, there's a look out and everything. Now, your kid could be in the backseat of the car with you while you're driving, and he could be on Pornhub, and you would have no idea. It's unbelievable. Yeah. The same is kind of true with drugs. You can now, like, you know, with like what's called spice in my country, those ever-evolving sort of smoky drugs, like, you know, that salts I think we call bath salts, that's right, in your country. You can just, like, you know, you can buy them online, your kid could be using drugs. So like, the way that we treat addiction has got to change, because addiction is changing, because like you say, your kid could be in the back of your car looking at Pornhub or ordering online drugs, and unless they have access to a way of addressing that, and the feelings that are motivating them towards that, because, yeah, my experience with porn was similar, but looking back, I recognised I was just trying to make myself feel better. Of course it's natural to, for your, when your sexuality is awakening, you're looking to express it, but is it the correct way to be looking at images again and again? You're starting off on the path of your sexuality, regarding the people that you'll be having sex with as an object, as the beginning of objectification is happening right there. So, for me, I was doing a lot to make myself feel better as well, I was like, ah, this makes me feel good, it's a distraction, I'm not in myself when I'm doing this, and you're right, it's terrifying the idea of the access to pornography that kids will have now. It seems like when you're, when you, for example, with sex, drugs and things like that people might say, hey man, look, you ever think about you're doing too much of this? Guys don't get that with sex, right? Your friends never go, look man, you're having too much sex, we need to tone it down. People are going, you're my hero. Yeah, that's right, and I used to, I noticed that a lot of how I would relate to men was about, like, I felt powerful among men, because other men knew that I would sleep with a lot of women. Now, what I have since learned is that a necessary component of that was that I was not respecting what it was like for people I was having sex with. Even though, of course, they were people that were, you know what's so amazing about being famous is people that are willing and excited and up for it, and there's a constant flow, and it's sort of unbelievable in one respect. It sounds pretty good right now. It does sound good when I'm saying it again, but the problem is, of course, that now I know, now that I'm awakened, one moment at a time, that these are human beings, and once you realize, oh, they're probably doing that for their, they've got their own motivation, because they're not going to feel any better of having sex with a famous person, except for the brief moment of orgasm, which I used to try to guarantee, Jordan. Other than that, you know, you're involving yourself in an exchange that isn't necessarily going to be beneficial. So I'm participating in other people's unconscious behavior, and for myself, it means I'm, what lies on the other side of addiction? That's what's interesting. What lies on the other side of the compulsion? See this, when you want to look at social media and you don't, what happens to you? You start to get anxious. You start to get nervous. You want to have sex with someone and you don't, what happens? You start to get nervous. You start to get anxious. Well, you have to go through that pain at some point, because if you live constantly confined by your unwillingness to go through pain, you do not develop into who you are supposed to be. You know, like, I lived in that cycle and then when I couldn't, it meant I became kind of stagnant spiritually. So if you mean that you have to go through that, that cycle of pain in order to get through the addiction, did the addiction, this sounds dumb now that I'm verbalizing it, but did then the addiction start because of pain? Yes. Addiction, this isn't really not dumb. It's the most, perhaps the most important observation that can be made about addiction is that addiction begins with pain and ends with pain. You're in pain. You introduce some secondary agent to deal with the pain. Then that might even make you feel worse as you're back in pain and you do it again. It's very obvious when it's drugs. It's less obvious when it's pornography. People feel ashamed. If someone's trying to be faithful in a relationship and they sleep with other people outside the relationship, they feel ashamed when they do it. And then the feeling of shame is so bad, like, you know, it's not always the right thing to tell the other person that they gets the worst, they do it again. Food, it's the same process. People, you feel awful, you're in pain, you feel lonely, you eat too much food, you make yourself cute, you feel ashamed, you do it again. At some point, this cycle has to be broken. This is one of the things I've found myself saying, and I think it's pretty true, Jordan, that we don't choose between having a program and not having a program. We choose between a conscious program and unconscious program. We're working the program. I've got a program already. My program is I want drugs. I want sex. I want people to like me. I want money. I want prestige. And if I don't intervene with that, like a sort of a war for it just rushes away. So this program makes me awaken. One, if there's a problem, whether it's drugs, sex, porn, food, relationships, whatever. One, there's a problem. Two, it's possible that it could be better because I see other people not living like it, other people that work the program. Three, I become willing to be teachable. I become willing to look at things in a different way. I come willing to accept help, whether it's from a community or from a higher power as a spiritual idea there. You mentioned that prestige was one of the things that you felt like, and pardon me if I'm putting words in your mouth, you're addicted to prestige as well. How does that fit in with your career now? Because you can't not have prestige and do the job that you're doing, but you have to then sort of short circuit the addiction part of the prestige. Part of how it is complex, Jordan, and like, the method and the perspective of addiction that I have, is that addiction as a drive, if you drill down, this thing is a will to power. Whether you call it obsessory compulsion, whatever it is, it's like, it's a yearning, a hunger. What does it want? What does it want this hunger? Now, once I'm awakened, I become, I'm sort of, I can watch it a little bit more, do you see? So it doesn't mean, right, I'm, for me, I'm not going to become a yogi or a monk or someone that lives in a cave and meditates all day. That's not, I don't think, my path. I'm going to be involved with the material world. I have a wife, I have a baby, I've got bees, damn it. Yeah, you've got bees. There's no going back. You can't abandon the bees. You can't un-be yourself. Yeah, but like, but what it changes is that I notice, oh, like, when I'm doing this podcast right now in this moment, I'm thinking, oh, I hope this goes well. I hope this will be the best one of the podcast that Jordan has ever done. So far, so good. And it will get the best figures. And like, now when I see myself thinking that, I sort of go that, you know, that's just that habit you have in your mind. Don't take it too seriously. Your thoughts become the first layer of the outside world. Your cognitive activity, your thoughts, no longer define you. You start to recognize it's just a pattern in your mind. Oh, I always think stuff like that. Don't worry about it too much. Like, oh no, I'm so shallow. I want everyone to love me. It's like, oh yeah, that's just a habit you picked up somewhere. That you aren't, I have tried to be the experiencer, the consciousness that watches those patterns. And when you have undergone this program, that perspective becomes easier to access. It is by no means permanent. That's why you get people that get to the top of the mountain, priests, yogis, swamis, and then you find out they're all having sex with the people in their communes. You're like, oh, all right, okay, I trusted you. It happens not just in Christian culture. It happens in like, you know, sort of in far out places where western people like me really think, oh no, they've got the arms so they don't robes or shaved it. You find out they're doing the same thing. Unless you stay moment to moment vigilant about your patterns, they will reassert. That has to be kind of scary to know that as much work as you've done to get through addiction, you're 15 years almost clean, right? Yes. That if you let your guard down, you could be back to square one. Is that not intimidating a little bit? It seems like that would be scary for me. Because it's like, you keep walking away from the cliff edge, and then you turn at right just to check and see how far away you are, and you realize you've just been walking along the cliff edge for 15 years. It's a good metaphor. Thanks. Well, yeah, but we are all walking along with cliff edge. In a way, the addiction just makes you address it. All of us have just one decision away from destroying our lives really. You can, in traffic, get in a fight with someone, you punch them, they hit their head, they die. That's your life now. Oh man. Or like you cheat on your wife because someone is nice to you and you feel vulnerable in that moment, or you take drugs and you overdose. You're never, you know, it can happen. So, and all of these, but I think you can guard against these things by having a kind of a spiritual awakening, by being connected. Look, in the terms of the program, like, one, are you a bit fucked? Yes. Two, could you not be fucked? Yeah, I see people that are not fucked all the time, so I could be like them. Three, are you on your own, going to unfuck yourself? No. Because I, whatever the answer is, it ain't in my head, because if it was, I'd have found it by now. Right. All I've done my whole life is tried to be happy, it's not working, I need help. Four, this is where it gets practical. Right, then all the things that fucking you up, or have ever fucked you up, don't lie, or leave anything else. You make a thorough inventory in this particular technique for doing that. Five, honestly tell someone trustworthy about how fucked you are, so you then, you start involving other people. Now, when I'd done that, it taught me that I didn't need to be so ashamed of myself, that all of the dark, dirty little secrets that I carried, the guide I told, yeah that's no big deal, I did something like that. Some level, I think we all think we're unlovable, wake up at 3 a.m. Oh no, I'm worthless, I'm crap, I'm not good enough, I'm a piece of shit. Well like, that's not real, it's just a sort of a pattern that you're carrying, and by telling someone else, it alleviates you. Most traditions have confession in them. Six, well that's a lot of fucked up patterns, do you want to stop it seriously? You know, you observe, oh yeah, I, like when I did the inventory, it made me realise, the way I got in trouble at school is the same way I got trouble at MTV. The way I got in trouble in Hollywood, same way I got in trouble in politics. I have a pattern, I get into a place, I get loads of attention, and then I do something mad, I've always done it. So like, and I do it because of pride, self-centredness, aspects of my ego. Am I then the step, the seventh step, right now you know that, are you willing to live in a new way that's not all about you and your previous fucked up stuff, you have to? It's like, well okay, am I willing to not do that? Now, think of the thing that's about lust, you know, the pornography. When it is easy in this room to think about that, if I'm on my own late at night, the feeling comes, oh maybe I will look at pornography, am I in that moment willing to take a different course of action, am I willing to call up someone else, go yeah, listen, I'm in this moment thinking about one, using drugs, two, cheating on my wife, three, pornography, four, eating food and making myself puke, five, texting that guy that I know is no good for me. You know, like, if you're prepared to make the phone call before you do it, the person will go okay, well remember, we've done all these steps, we've done all this inventory, we know where this leads, are you going to do it yes or no? And that sometimes gives you respite, that's why you're working one day at a time, one moment at a time, because it will always come back, you are always working on the cliff edge, I like that analogy. Hey, once you've done this process you realise you've hurt a lot of people in your life, prepare to apologise to everyone for everything affected by you being so fucked up, so you prepare to apologise, you just go, will you write down all the people you might have harmed. Oh wow, that's got to be a sobering pardon the pun list of people, because it can't be a short list. No, I'm old, you know, like there's loads of people, and a lot of those people, you know what you do, you go, yeah, but they did this, and that you're not allowed to do that, you have to never mind what they did, what did you do, and you just put down your stuff, and like you've completely eliminated, each of you, like my stepdad, if I think, oh, my stepdad, he, like, I wasn't, I wasn't very nice to him when I was a kid, but my next thought is, yeah, if I was just a kid, he's an adult, I don't know, I should have known better, but that's not going to help me change, go and he should know better, that's where I am already, I need to change my perspective, and to change my perspective, I have to go, forget what he did, I did something wrong, and then the next step, now apologise, unless that would make things worse, so I get myself to frame in mind, where I become willing to go without any of the parentheses or caveats, go, why have I behaved when you were with my mum, it was not acceptable, I apologise for that, it must have hurt you, it must have been very difficult for you, I'm not that man anymore, I don't live like that, and I don't treat people that way anymore, apologise, is there anything else that I did that you want to tell me about, and if there's anything I can do to make amends, I'll do it, right, you become like, and once you do that, it's sort of your consciousness has changed, you've hacked into your patterns, you can't do that all at once though, because if you, right, because if you apologise to people and say, is there anything else you want to go back and forth, there's probably a lot of people that go, you know what, now that you mentioned it, there's a whole lot of stuff you did when we lived together a while, I was raising you, during your college years, blah blah blah, when we were married, and you, you, you got to be taken some, not abuse maybe, but, or maybe abuse from some of these people, whether you deserve it or not, you go into it consciously and you don't go into it alone, you go into it, you know, that's the ninth step for reason, you've already done these previous like steps, you're already a different guy by the time you get to that point, and also importantly, you do it under the guidance of a mentor, so one by one you go and the men are right, I'm doing the one with the step dad now, okay, so what are your expectations, how do you see it going, what are you going to say, what are you going to say when he says this, so an important part of it and in fact the best part of it is the bit where they go, you don't know this, but when you did that, it made me feel this, and you just have to sit there while someone tells you and you think, oh my god, my actions really hurt other people, and the reason it's called an amends process, it's not just restitution and apology to the other person because it amends you, you think I'm not doing that ever again, I don't ever want to hurt someone the way I've hurt that person, people that just will be like extras in your life, people that you just passed by in a crowd scene, you think oh my god, I damaged them, so now when I'm walking down a corridor, access Hollywood or wherever we happen to be, we could be in any number of places, that's right, could have been that, could have just chosen after me, went all down a corridor, I don't, like I'm polite to everyone, I'm polite, like and I don't, like I want, no one coming away going, he's dick that guy, I can't take no more of it. It's a lot of responsibility, especially for somebody who's in the spotlight. But what choice do we have, Jordan, you know, that's the realization that you come to, and that there isn't another, like, it's almost, you're not giving anything up, because none of that stuff works anyway, it's not like yeah, but no, I can't be an arsehole anymore, like being an arsehole wasn't working anyway, otherwise I'd have carried on doing it, having sex with everyone weren't working, being obsessed with fame and money wasn't working, so you're not giving up anything real every so often, of course, you are seduced again, like look, this is what's important here, it was on what I'm trying to do, which I think is a bit hard, is that I think there's a lot of stuff in religion that is being sort of booted out in the secular age, because we all know the complications with religious life, the violence, the bigotry, the institutionalization, etc. But in religion there are stories that are about the human psyche and the human condition that are indispensable, e.g. We're talking about what we're talking about now, oh it's a tough gig this, like well look at the myth of the Egyptian sun god Ra, who nightly wrestles with the serpent of darkness so that the dawn may come, knowing that the next day he will undertake the same battle again, I mean of course that helps, you know, primitive, I mean not primitive, they're good with pyramids, but like you know, early people to have some relationship with astronomy and astrology and all that, but it also helps to understand this is life, the everyday, Sisypheus who daily pushes the rocks to the top of the mountain, knowing that tomorrow he does it again, Prometheus who has his guts pecked out by the eagle for stealing fire and giving light to mankind, knows that the next day his stomach's gonna heal and the eagle's gonna peck it out again, this is it, accept it, life is, there is suffering in life, we're gonna die, so the choices are, are you gonna be beautiful while you're here or are you gonna make stuff worse, now the problem I think we have is the culture, not individuals anymore, but of course individuals, but more importantly the culture is saying we are gonna make it as bad as possible, we're gonna exemplify and constitutionalise the worst aspects of human nature, greed, selfishness, these are gonna be our politics now, these are our, I'm not even talking about recent events though, obviously, yes, but capitalism generally, materialism generally, an age of darkness, an age where we only understand what's gross, because we've forgotten how to go within, and like this simple program for dealing with yourself means that I as just one little unit within it am doing my best, with the severe and underscored caveat, I'm still a total fuck up and I still every day will do stuff that's selfish and make mistakes and be impatient with my wife and make mistakes with my kid, but the guiding light is I'm trying to be good, I'm not just going yeah but that's life, who gives a shit, so what, it doesn't really matter does it, so what, yeah it was my wife's lucky to have me, who cares if I sleep with some other people as well, yeah I mean I can go that way if I like all of us, we can all go that way, we're all comprised of you know good and evil, so but this is just, it's a commitment an intention, a program, a method speaking of wrestling with good and evil, you've been a vegetarian since you were 14, so at one point in your life there was, as your vegetable juice arrives on cue, Jung would say that that was a sign that we are communing the subjective in a world and the objective our world are communing and aligning, Jung would say I like that it's not a plastic straw too, it's a paper straw, yeah I mean it's, that cup's probably made out of like the corn plastic I hope yeah now this is for, look certified composal, yeah made from corn, you're a great guy, I keep these, so you were a vegetarian since you were 14 that means then at one point in your life you are not willing to eat meat but you were willing to like do crack or something, that's right how's an interesting stage go how does that work, what was going on there? some of it's about identity I think yeah that I was a fan of the smiths and I just, I found it impossible not to translate my sort of love of animals on a kind of, oh that dog like I found it impossible to not translate that to, I couldn't eat that animal over there, you know, it came sort of repulsive mentally and a nice commitment and for me, you know drugs, although you're a pain in the ass to other people, it's pretty, it's a self-destructive thing, you're trying to annihilate the self, you're trying to get beyond the self, so it's your self you're harming really, so the vegetarianism, I must admit there are probably late night relapses at burger vans out of my mind on something or another where I urge from that path but I see the paradox of being like a vegetarian crackhead yeah it just seems so so unusual but I think it makes sense with your earlier I don't know parables the right word with the constant battle that's going on it seems like almost like there's an element of all right well I can't control this area of my life so maybe I can try to control this other area and be strict enough with it and also the addiction is a little bit about control yeah because it's you can control it you can get heroin you can get crack you can alter your state of mind much harder to control another human being impossible ultimately yeah so I think it's about my what I liked about being a drug addict is you're just on your own I wasn't very sociable just on your own doing drugs shutting down all nice and comfortable and all of the pain melting away and the tight fist in my belly opening up problem was is in the end it's not working and it got worse and it created worse problems so I needed to find another way of alleviate in that tension and thankfully I found it in that in that program so I think addiction is a sort of way of finding control finding meaning finding order finding connection in a culture that doesn't provide it doesn't know how to provide it because it's too busy turning you into a component in an economic machine why write this book now after being clean for 15 years you know why not write it earlier what sparked the interest suddenly in this because it's not like you just recovered you're like I'm gonna write a book on this and you've done you've gone through this process for as long as the us the public is really known you because I think at this point I understand it and I understand it well enough to know how little I understand it I'm at a point where I can say whilst I've written this book anybody that's got clean time could have written a book I still like I still have to spend and enjoy and love spending time with other recovering addicts and recovering alcoholics and people with issues around all manner of compulsions and when I go and spend time with them like I'm not like sat in the middle like with a blanket straight around me and dramatically lit I'm just another one of them and it's a relief to be another one of them and it's a relief to know that I'm still like you say on the cliff edge and that I could fall over at any moment I'm not better than anybody else I don't have that illusion I lost that now sometimes I can be a bit grand and a show off but I know that I'm no better than anyone else but the relief is I know I'm no worse than anybody else I'm just a normal person you see that film punch drunk love the Sandler movie a long time ago yeah there's a bit in it right where after he confronts Philip Seymour Hoffman who's been bullying him on the phone like after he's been real meek and he's been easily bullied there's a bit where he just like you know he confronts him finally and goes I'm a nice person I'm a nice person and the reason that it's sort of beautiful and moving is because he's not saying I'm great or I'm powerful or I'm wonderful I'm invincible just like I'm a nice person it's such a simple little aspiration I'm a nice person to just be a nice person in the book so I suppose if I had written this a while ago there'd be much more I'm the new Jesus about it now I'm always attracted to being the new Jesus why not I mean part of the point of Jesus was saying that there is a consciousness accessible to all of us that's within us the kingdom of heaven is within the way to God is through IA the way to God is through the self it's about the God made flesh it was about God is within man God is not in the constellations and the stars God is in your belly God is telling you don't do that that was wrong so no one else is telling me don't cheat no one else telling me don't speak badly to people if that you don't think they can do anything for you through my guts go that was true what you just did like who is that in there saying that Jiminy click it asshole kicking me in the guts so you know now it's written from a perspective of fallibility and ordinary real fallibility about the ordinary real aspiration that ordinary people can have but we can all have together to be beautiful how do you prioritize your different passions on the one hand your comedian actor public personality of thousands of people constantly interrupting you and trying to get your attention but on the other hand you're creative so you need to carve out massive amounts of time to be creative create books create great comedy I would imagine that requires a lot of solitude and these paths maybe appear to contradict right you you have to be in the limelight you have to be accessible you have to be interacting with people but you you probably have to carve out a piece of your life to think deeply otherwise you're just you wouldn't be able to do it it is contradictory and it's changed since I've been married and had a baby before my whole life even though I was clean from drugs for a long time the behaviors was carried the behaviors were carrying on around sex and behaviors were carrying on around the obsession with the work itself and and the results of the work now I have a wife and have a daughter and these are so compelling and so absorbing that you it like my baby and my wife will with me on this trip so like when I'm in the hotel room before then maybe there'll be a stylist and you know who would be a good friend of mine if you know I have hair and makeup that's also a good friend to my life the focus the pinnacle of my life is the showing off in those times now's a baby baby stuff everywhere so you can't but be ordinary it just grounds you it smashes you or ego in and your face actually sometimes yeah so many bloody ways violent child and I've sort of learned it's a very in one way a practical thing like I do stand up three nights a week back in the UK I've written this book and I know that if I don't spend time at home if I don't spend time around other addicts I'll go wrong you know I so I've got no choice and like the last three steps finally enough are the maintenance steps one use we've done like the making amends and the things that we've already talked through 10 watch out for fucked up thinking of behavior and be honest when it happens so if I'm out today and I start thinking that's the point where it starts to be real if I start thinking that person should have said that or this should have done that or that should have solved more I go ah that thing's happening it's happening again right and so step 11 stay connected to any perspective that's why I need prayer and meditation because part of my life is solitude doesn't matter if this goes well or if this goes badly I'm going to be sitting down for half an hour with a candle in my case looking a picture of Amma the great hugging saint who travels from India does nothing but raise his money and helps people and sleeps on floor she's just like an unbelievable figure and I'm going to be you know that that will be part of my day and the prayer part of it reminds me of the principles that I want to live for by what I'm grateful for in my life and what how I'm supposed to treat people and number 12 and the point of all of this curiously look at life less selfishly be nice to everyone help people if you can like so this whole journey deposits you in a place where you're trying to be of use to people and again every day I will default back to hmm should I buy this shirt or not do I look cool in this photo I don't like that as I said that but it's not I don't just accept it justify pursue it I remember oh no god have you done anything for anyone else today no all I've done all day is thought about myself I'll go out I'll try and help someone and be productive and constructive and those things that's changing you I mean I don't know much about neuroplasticity you'll be surprised to learn yeah apparently you've changed your consciousness alters absolutely things yeah absolutely we talk about neuroplasticity all the time on the show do you and essentially it's like drive it you know when you you see a road in a hot climate and it's got the the little dimples where the all the cars drive yes it's a lot like that right so when it's hot and that asphalt heats up cars drive along essentially the same way or a hiking trail that is carved in a a grassy area you can see it because people keep walking on it that's essentially a very oversimplified way of how the brain works so if you start different habits you can start to create new neural pathways the problem with things like addiction is that those old pathways that you've treaded for a decade and a half or whatever since you were 14 years old those are still there and you know that from experience whether you know about neuroplasticity or not because if somebody were to hold you down and force you to do a substance you would those pathways are the light up like crazy and you might have a hard time stopping again so now you've got your new habit which is this green juice and that's a more healthy habit to have but as you know any habit done to an extreme can result in something negative right you could end up surrounded by plastic cups or corn made cups and have missed all of your appointments and haven't hung out with your family in three months because you got addicted to this green juice wallowing in kale in a bathtub i'm not going anywhere bring me more kale it easily happened and like one of the things about the spiritual life that is fascinating to me is the way that they somehow thank you for explaining that so well the way that they intuited information that we can now demonstrate materially and anatomically medically they intuited that so this system of course it was the 12th step was only 100 years i'll be taken from a christian group the oxford group which was older than that and they and these principles are perennial and universal and they're found everywhere like with the mindfulness movement they said oh wow if you meditate you know like it's good for your blood it's good for your heart oh is there anyone else that was saying that you should meditate like thousands of years ago before scanning was available yeah well what else are those people saying because i think there might be other stuff in there you know it's obvious that there's a lot of stuff that's in religion that are the cultural inflections of the time that they were written big eared prejudicial information practical stuff that doesn't seem relevant anymore sure all of that but this the thing that interests me are the things that are found in all religions that's the stuff that we should be focusing on if it's found in all of them there's a kind of something that's coming out of the human consciousness that's truthful and so now that it's found in the religion of our time which i accept is you know more science based and empirical and that's a bloody good thing and it's given us so much but we should look to which of those principles were already present and that's just one example you can act yourself into thinking differently you can't think yourself into acting differently you can act yourself into thinking differently but you can't think yourself in it acting differently yeah i like that it's good yeah that's really good did you come up with that no that's a 12 step trope a lot of these things are like things these are sort of the folk wisdom yeah the 12 step program that's great we're going to throw that up on a quote or a little meme or something that you won't see because it'll be on social media do you mind when you do do it saying russia brank came out with that on his own in a room using nothing but he's genius yes he said didn't plagiarize it from a group of people we'll put that thing together yeah we'll put that whole thing in a paragraph yeah that'll work do you ever think i would have got a baby daughter oh crap i've slept with a lot of women this is what men are like maybe i should does that ever worry you or you just kind of like look i'm not yeah on one level because i sort of see it like maybe you're talking to me again when she's 16 but like yeah hopefully 25 but like sure you should be so lucky but like what i'm thinking is i don't see like what i feel is i don't know what type of a woman she's gonna be and that's the other sort thing is i'm gonna teach her i hope if she's up for it like to not do stuff to make her feel good just for the sake of it to be a grounded connected person and the only way i can do that is by being grounded and connected around her now i know all parents go into parenthood with those objectives and all sorts of couples must come flying in from every direction but my hope is is that by being conscious and awake around her she won't go oh i feel great if i drink a lot if i sleep with a load of people i don't want to try that and it does work temporarily but here's some boring stuff right don't try this green juice smileball you'll find it even more satisfying yeah it could be tough especially with a teenager i know because you know the score about neurology and biochemistry that she won't even have the mental facility literally doesn't arrive till the mid 20s to understand some aspects of reason i was listening to she will however have the mental facility to tell you that you don't know anything you don't understand and you never could understand and then she's going to read this book and probably curl up with any luck for you curl up in a little ball and go to sleep and realize she dodged a bullet right i'm sorry i'm sorry you were on cold bear last night was that that was your first time on the show yeah yeah how is this stuff for you now i mean this aside things like cold bear and going on other shows that we can't name for legal reasons is that stuff still fun or are you kind of like all right this part of the job i'm used to it by now it is still fun if i do it right like cold bear i'm recognized that something like this talking to you it's like the reason i love this medium is it sort of kind of oddly old fashioned in a way it's less constructed it's a lot more room to unpack and examine ideas it's more free form it's more intimate it's more real something like going on cold bear is her performance that's what i'm aware of and i noticed while i was doing it i thought oh god i'm acting funny you know i'm pulling like doing silly stuff with my legs i'm leaning into him i'm being antique and daft um but i kind of like doing that you know it's a laugh to do that um and then like maybe and another thing is i recognize my own snobbery because like going on to like um say daytime shows that are built around entertainment i so i think well i'm i read very deep scriptural texts i analyze nature i don't think that these people can understand me but i go on i realize i'm from that background i like it whether you you know whether it's entertainment or growing up watching that stuff and these people are just people like me they're interested in the same things i'm interested in and funny enough a few of those shows that i've been on i've i've been given a little bit of a wake up because they're like they've been sort of like oh my cousin's a drug addict or like my relationships co-dependent they've spoken a very plain way i've been like oh brilliant well this is what this is about so it's been actually you know that cuts adolescent idea of oh man the system this is all bullshit i don't see things like that no more i sort of believe that i one of the things that i maintain and that's a continuum of the last recovery was a revolution and it was all about like changing systems and anarchism and deception in the media and sort of my understanding of no Chomsky and like learning and trying to distill important academic information into an accessible format one of the things that continues is i think i'm optimistic about people i think people are beautiful and that people will change and so i don't when i'm going on populist TV and everything i'm too good for this i sort of think that's a beautiful humans this is going to be brilliant and they're looking to you both to be entertained and for you to make them think or do you think people are looking at you to you to be entertained and then you're kind of like let me slide some entertainment in there and then i hear something that's much more important i try and do both of those things like because i think that's a nice way to learn when i'm listening to people giving me spiritual information and advice i love the theoretical stuff but when people tell me a story about i did this and this is how it felt i like it you know and when people tell me stuff that's funny it really impacts me so being put in the conditions where i have to be entertaining is not a drag it's like a kind of joy as long as i look after myself i'm over tired and i can be a bit i don't know i can't do this bullshit yeah i wondered if that was going to happen today i was like maybe we should just do a really short one because he might be really tired no it's been a joy to talk about it and it's a context in which i feel comfortable you're obviously a very intelligent person and you're obviously tuned into what's real and challenging yourself and willing to be open i've been watching you and your eye contact and i obviously go in for things yourself in life and i sort of lovely to be able to communicate with another person well i appreciate it man i appreciate you and i appreciate this i wish i'd had this before today because i would have read the whole thing and then pulled out even more but that just means that you have to come back at some point what is what is next for you by the way do you know yet i mean you have to promote this so we'll we'll make sure we do that but i'm curious do not stand up i'll probably come back to this country america and do stand up soon uh i may do some acting i sometimes read a film script if you could let um what else would i do i don't know this is a weird time in my life i've sort of always used to know i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do this now i don't really know but i feel all right about it by the way the back of my head is in your comedy special at the impromptu from about four years ago oh wow right in the middle too and i thought oh man we had to do this thing because we were in those first rows where they're like you got to sign a waiver because if you turn around this way you're in your face is in there maybe oh thanks yeah it was cool i did like it i want with a group you know it's interesting because i went with a group of people that i had decided they have done some pretty shady stuff to me years and years ago and they called and they said will you come and go to this Russell brand thing with us and i said no because you guys did all this stuff that was really shitty and they said actually that's why we're inviting you because we all want to apologize and we all want to make up and take you up to dinner and we would love for you to come to this comedy thing with us and end the night on this feel-good note and that's exactly what happened oh my god i was a tool for reconciliation you were absolutely excellent so thank you very much for everything thanks sure thank you we started with bees we ended with connection that's right pretty big alright and we look in it's two minutes before we we're gonna get kicked out anyway probably