This week on Stay Free with Russell Brand: Amelia, the Home Office's new video game, Crack On, where we talk about recovery with producer Jake Smith, and our friend Dave Fields, who grew up in care in a foster home.
00:00:50.000But if you work out like I work out, if you sweat out there when you're doing the hot yoga, if you pound those pavements training like Apollo Creed himself, see them, there's me rocky pants, there's me rocky ones, my rocky twos, my rocky threes, and me rocky fours.
00:01:05.000Then you are going to need to keep yourself double fit.
00:01:39.000And they created this character, Amelia, that's been delightfully turned against them.
00:01:42.000I'll be discussing that as well as our podcast, Crack On, where we talk about recovery with the friend of the show, Jake Smith, producer, here as always.
00:03:48.000If you haven't got Rumble Premium yet, get Rumble Premium now.
00:03:51.000So that you can arm yourself, not necessarily with the facts, but certainly a perspective that's honest, open and good-hearted to oppose the endless, senseless propaganda that constitutes what I want to call it, the substance of the mainstream.
00:04:08.000The Home Office, that's the British State Department, say, they launched this video game to sort of get young kids to think a certain way about immigration.
00:04:17.000Now, you might even think that an open-hearted and compassionate approach to migration is the way to go.
00:04:22.000Certainly, I know that ultimately we must love and take care of one another.
00:04:27.000But what I hate even more than sort of racism, bigotry, and even violent race wars is sanctimony and sentimentality.
00:04:35.000And the British government have got nothing left to offer.
00:04:38.000They say that sentimentality is unearned emotion.
00:04:42.000And certainly the British government are running on unearned power.
00:04:45.000And that's why they make blunders and mistakes like this, making video games to reach out to the kids that somehow completely miss the mark.
00:04:53.000Like an anti-drug campaign when you're at school.
00:04:56.000Like when they bring the police to your schools, go, okay, a police officer going to talk to you today, kids, about why not to do drugs.
00:05:02.000And then the police officer shows you all the different types of drugs.
00:05:04.000And you're just sitting there thinking, them drugs look pretty fucking good to me, man.
00:05:09.000They never ever get it right because they're fundamentally wrong.
00:05:13.000Here's a British media organisation, a radio station in this instance, commenting on it.
00:05:18.000Oh, actually, let's start with the original game.
00:05:19.000This is how the character of Amelia was intended to be used.
00:05:22.000Charlie has been chilling out all afternoon.
00:05:25.000They have been scrolling on social media.
00:05:28.000This is part of a video that seems to be getting...
00:05:31.000That fucking working class accent they're using.
00:05:38.000We're just like, seems to be getting a lot of attention.
00:05:42.000Charlie watches the video and learns from the video that Muslim men are stealing the places of British war veterans in emergency accommodation.
00:05:51.000In the video, they explain that the government is betraying white British people and we need to take back control of our country.
00:06:00.000Charlie couldn't believe what they were seeing.
00:06:08.000Charlie immediately began typing comments and sharing the video with their friends and family, wondering what they could do to stop this.
00:06:15.000As the likes, comments and shares came in, they felt that they had performed a patriotic service by standing up for veterans and white people's rights.
00:06:23.000Unfortunately, Charlie didn't realize that some of the groups they were engaging with online were actually illegal.
00:06:30.000Charlie thought about all the difficult choices that there used to be an advert called Charlie Says when I was a kid that was meant to be protecting you from paedophiles as a matter of fact.
00:06:39.000They would regularly trot this cat out actually to tell us, you know, don't get in a van with a geezer offering up puppies and candy, which frankly we already knew would be an unwise action.
00:06:51.000And they're still using the same sort of timbre, that bureaucratic emptiness, that sort of sense of counterfeit mimicry that always accompanies any government endeavour because their power is fake power and their motives are fake motives.
00:08:08.000Ooh, have you accidentally become racist because of t-misinformation?
00:08:12.000Oh, t misinformation's got a god made me feel all racist.
00:08:18.000Charlie's friend Amelia immediately looked interested and told them about a protest she wished she could go to herself, but was not allowed.
00:08:27.000Amelia spoke of a gathering that had been organised by a small political group.
00:08:32.000They would come together and protest the changes that Britain has been through in the last few years.
00:09:00.000I bet there's a hundred things I'd disagree with Tommy Robinson on.
00:09:03.000But what I agree with him on fundamentally is telling the truth, boldness, bravery, being willing to confront your opponents openly.
00:09:11.000And it seems he did some pretty valuable investigative work on uncovering rape gangs.
00:09:17.000Thousands and thousands of victims reported that they were raped in police stations contemporaneously.
00:09:24.000Recent reports to the police that they had been raped.
00:09:28.000Let me know in the comments and chat why the Metropolitan Police Force or the relevant boroughs and the Crown Prosecution Service wouldn't be interested in this spate of significant crimes and why such significant endeavors were undertaken to constrict, restrict, control and jail Tommy Robinson.
00:09:45.000And of course this kind of government video.
00:09:47.000Tommy Robinson, people think he was jailed for no reason.
00:09:50.000Often he was jailed for sort of peculiar misdemeanours, mortgage, fraud, not using the correct kind of passport.
00:09:56.000Again, this is not advocacy for everything Tommy Robinson's ever said or ever done.
00:10:00.000He's a pretty full-on, passionate, full-blooded person.
00:10:03.000He's obviously got a history of doing all sorts of stuff.
00:10:05.000And hey, I've made some mistakes as well, but I haven't done the things I've been accused of.
00:10:10.000And I believe I've been accused of those things because of some of the things I've done that were not mistakes.
00:10:25.000Let me know in the comments and chat if you agree with that, and let's have a look at some more of their ill-judged, poorly delivered propaganda.
00:10:31.000...has been through in the last few years, and the erosion of British values.
00:10:36.000Amelia talked about the banners and the pickets that her friends had made for the events, and expressed a real regret that she could not go, begging Charlie to go in her place.
00:10:51.000Charlie decided this would be a good use of their time.
00:10:55.000Considering all the things they had seen and heard over the last few weeks, it would be good to express their feelings about it with Wake.
00:11:03.000Is it like Charlie's going to die, any?
00:11:04.000Or get beaten up or arrested or something?
00:11:07.000He seems like a pretty sweet lad, this Charlie.
00:11:08.000This reminds me of the success of that knife crime drama that occurred a little while ago that had the brilliant British actor in it.
00:11:16.000What's his name, that lad from Liverpool?
00:11:17.000I can't remember most of the name and all.
00:11:19.000Anyway, like there's this knife crime drama that done well, even won Emmys and stuff in your country.
00:11:25.000But the reason it was primarily promoted is that the knife crime drama told a story of young people being corrupted by social media.
00:11:35.000That young people, all these poor, vulnerable kids, they're all getting manipulated and manoeuvred.
00:11:41.000By, you know, Andrew Tate is the one that people primarily point to in such an instance.
00:11:46.000But the fact is, is the people that I mean, have you got any idea of the scope and scale and sheer number of children that go missing every year?
00:12:50.000Chat GPT is generally speaking, I'd say, let me know in the comments and chat, inclined towards being somewhat supportive of institutional power.
00:12:58.000And it seems to me that it's probably funded, founded, and guided by the establishment interests that currently exist and probably is an amplification of them.
00:13:06.000I mean, if the BBC has an AI, it's ChatGPT.
00:13:26.000I mean, I know it's almost inconceivable because it has such vast resources, but what are the differences between Grok and Chat GPT, mate?
00:13:32.000Well, it's not necessarily that, I mean, it does fall on OpenAI to how they train their model.
00:13:41.000But what it also has to do is where it's getting the information from.
00:13:44.000So where's it getting the information from?
00:13:46.000The New York Times, the BBC, like, I mean, it's the sources are what's feeding it.
00:13:53.000And there's responsibility on their part of how they train it and adjust it and adjust their parameters around it.
00:14:02.000Where Grok will not necessarily rank a New York Times article the same way it would rank, you know, it'll more aggregate lots of articles.
00:14:13.000These attempts to create hierarchies of information are ultimately about control.
00:14:19.000And even for someone like me who suffered at the hands of the media establishment, I still feel a kind of pang when I see the logos of the New York Times or The Guardian or the BBC or CNN.
00:14:32.000And by that, I mean the pang of authoritative branding.
00:14:36.000I don't mean I loathe and detest them and see them as liars, although in my heart and my spirit, I know that that's the case, that that's their fundamental function and essential role in the culture is to lie to you and deceive you.
00:14:47.000I know there's really good people that work there.
00:14:48.000I've actually worked in some of those places.
00:14:51.000But the point of them is to lie to you and deceive you.
00:14:54.000And what I mean by that is if lying to you and deceiving you was removed, you would remove them also.
00:14:59.000Whereas something like, no, no, this show, we've, of course, you know, buy these products or buy that product.
00:15:06.000I'm aware that Peter Thiel is involved and I'm aware of Larry Ellison and Oracle and Palantir and the power of these enormous organizations.
00:15:14.000But I'm telling you now, no one has ever told me you can't say this or you can say that.
00:15:18.000And presumably it's because they're aware of limitations of reach and the fact that the kind of content I make currently, particularly while these trials are taking place, shadow banned and controlled to such a degree that doesn't really represent a significant threat.
00:15:28.000But you always represent a significant threat.
00:15:31.000Your attention, your consciousness and your decisions are important.
00:15:33.000And that's why the government's gone to the trouble of making for the population of the UK this extraordinary piece of propaganda.
00:15:41.000But what's delightful and heartening is what began as an attempt to control has, of course, as is often the case with the internet, been mobilized and metabolised into a weapon.
00:15:52.000She's kind of Amelia is like the white working class's N-word.
00:15:56.000It was used as a slur and an attack and as a derogatory term, but it has now been turned into a weapon against those very forces.
00:16:05.000Let's watch the rest of this bit of propaganda.
00:16:31.000The police saw they were part of a group and took their details.
00:16:35.000Charlie was frightened by this, not knowing if their parents would be informed.
00:16:39.000Well, given his dad's clearly Adolf Hitler, he's got bigger fish to fry.
00:16:43.000If their parents would be informed, some of their choices had led to changes in friendship, and Charlie was feeling low, as they weren't sure if they had made the right decisions.
00:16:53.000The teacher had noticed this and decided to reach out.
00:16:56.000The teacher sat with them and talked openly and frankly about the ideology that Charlie had discovered.
00:17:02.000The teacher reassured that Charlie had made the right decisions.
00:17:06.000Charlie realized that if they had them, they are still doing that.
00:17:43.000They were reluctant at first, but gradually warmed to their mentor, forming trust with them, having heard and understood the similarities between them.
00:18:30.000Dangers of following a harmful ideology.
00:18:32.000And the message resonated with Charlie.
00:18:35.000Charlie had been informed of the support they would receive from Prevent, including skills support and family sessions.
00:18:42.000With all these gentler interventions, Charlie was able to rebuild their confidence, find their identity, and continue their college course successfully.
00:18:54.000Oh my god, what do they think they're dealing with?
00:18:57.000I'm so delighted by the emergence of a punk spirit.
00:19:01.000Remember, punk when it emerged in our great country was a response to deception, hypocrisy, and a pop culture that had become infatuated with glamour and progressivism, certainly in terms of its musical style.
00:19:18.000And punks was a true working class return to just pick up a guitar and make your own art.
00:19:26.000One of the things that's positive about internet culture, and Lord alone knows there are many things that are negative, is that we can do the same.
00:19:37.000They have turned Amelia into a global icon.
00:19:41.000Let's have a look at what the internet has done with Amelia.
00:19:45.000Amelia is an AI purple-haired goth girl originally created for an anti-extremism computer game generated by the Home Office.
00:19:54.000I'll just tell you briefly that that's Andrew Maher, long-time BBC employee, currently, as you can see, working for a radio station called LBC.
00:20:02.000And it was to him that Noam Chomsky made the famous remark under these circumstances when Chomsky had written his book, The Manufacturer of Consent, which described how medium institutions and political organisations created a reality for ordinary citizens to operate within and without us ever knowing that we were consenting to being controlled, i.e., the manufacture of consent.
00:20:25.000You don't know where the information that you believe in has come from.
00:20:29.000You don't know what the goals of the powerful are, and you don't know how to meaningfully change the power bases in your own country or in your own systems of government.
00:20:39.000Andrew Ma, then a BBC employee, said, but I'm a journalist.
00:20:43.000I work for the BBC and I haven't been told what to say.
00:20:47.000And Chomsky said memorably and famously, no, that's not what I'm saying.
00:22:14.000Why does this keep happening in today?
00:22:16.000There were 12,000 posts involving this character in one day.
00:22:20.000The other thing that's perhaps most damning about this is Elon Musk himself has now retweeted an account which has created a cry that's no good.
00:23:54.000I think it's hateful to make a patronising cartoon that assumes that working class people aren't capable of making decisions about their own country, their own culture, their own religion.
00:24:02.000And that's a trend that's lasted a long, long while.
00:24:04.000Long before Amelia or this ridiculous new system of messaging, people were being condemned for having white vans or flags outside their houses.
00:24:11.000And if you're a person like me that grew up in streets with white vans and flags outside their houses, you feel this kind of bridling anger growing inside of you.
00:24:19.000And while you might know that nations aren't real and there's more important things in life than white vans and fish and chips and anti-establishment politics, you get the sense of something deep that's happening and it's divine control being posited in human hands.
00:24:33.000And worst of all, they're lying to you about it.
00:24:34.000They're telling you that they're trying to help you.
00:25:46.000And the only thing that's worse than the suffering itself is being lied to about it by someone who's gone to some media college somewhere telling you that, well, they're trying to monetize it is what they're trying to do.
00:26:28.000If you pull the thread of this campaign that's on LBC right there, that man saying it's pretty obvious where this is coming from, this Amelia thing.
00:26:35.000No, it's coming from thousands of people simultaneously.
00:26:39.000Whereas what they're trying to decry and undermine is that spontaneously across the UK, people have realized that Britain is a country that their grandparents fought and died for.
00:26:51.000That Christianity is a serious alternative to the idea of believing in commerce and commodity, essentially nothingness.
00:26:59.000There's a mass awakening and revival taking place and they're terrified.
00:28:32.000Now, for what it's worth, my personal perspective is that there will be no solution or peace or real freedom for any of us until we are able to look at one another, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, Jew, in love and respect and honour.
00:28:46.000And for the people of the UK, whether they feel fretful and threatened or happy about current states of migration, they're going to have to come to some terms.
00:29:03.000But what I do believe in, as a British person, is having a laugh and speaking freely and letting the tension out.
00:29:10.000My prayer is, my literal prayer in fact, is that the people of the United Kingdom can find a peaceful way of communicating, of expressing themselves without falling into the traps laid before them to tar them as racists and therefore silence their voices.
00:29:25.000British people and Christians in the United Kingdom, albeit I practice their religious freedoms without fear.
00:29:32.000I've seen a spate of stories about banning Christian events and Christian marches.
00:29:38.000And neither should Muslims feel afraid to practice their faith either.
00:29:43.000If there are concerns in the UK about the demographic balance between Muslims and Christians and any other concerns, then I suppose if you live in a democracy, you should ask the British people what they want and allow them to vote on it.
00:29:59.000And where possible, regionalize that voting to the maximum.
00:30:03.000I.e. if people in some particular region want to run it according to Sharia law, would you be open to that possibility if you could run your own community according to your own principles?
00:30:16.000Without difficult compromises, it's very easy to see that we're set for 5, 10, 15, 20 years of compromise and conflict.
00:30:26.000Unless we're willing to look at different solutions, then we're going to live within the same old problems.
00:30:30.000But that's just why I think, why don't you let me know what you think in the comments and the chat?
00:30:34.000We can't make this content without the support of our partners.
00:31:36.000I'm saying literally, because I know a lot of you are like, Nate, you'll try and make that about the Jews, won't you?
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00:34:03.000See, I don't even like to be mean to you when I'm joking because I think Joe's endured a lot.
00:34:10.000Like sometimes when I've heard you talk about some of the violence you've gone through, I think, oh, dear God, this person don't need to take no more.
00:41:20.000Of course, the step is just as written there.
00:41:22.000It's just a summary of the whole step.
00:41:23.000And the whole step seems to me, and let me know in the comments and chat if you agree or disagree, to be about stay conscious and present and notice what's happening to you.
00:41:31.000And that's what Dave's describing now is a kind of numbness.
00:41:35.000And for me, like numbness is the goal of a lot of my addictive behaviors.
00:41:40.000Like when I'm like, I'd rather go and play Assassin's Creed on the PS5 with my kid than sit around and actively play a game with the whole family or talk to someone.
00:41:50.000That normally means I'm beginning the process of cutting off.
00:41:54.000And that's one of my responses to tiredness.
00:41:56.000And like meditation is such a, you know, which is the step that follows step 10, obviously step 11, but that's increased through prayer and meditation, our conscious contact with God.
00:42:06.000Like I've been doing Course in Miracles and it's been a very effective and beautiful complement, supplement, and I sometimes think even enhancement of my sort of Christian work in so much as everything it suggests feels completely in line with Christian principles.
00:42:22.000Like I sort of can almost, even with the limits of my own knowledge of scripture, sense, ah, resist not evil.
00:42:28.000Ah, seek thee first the kingdom of God.
00:42:30.000Forgive everyone, like forgive everyone.
00:42:34.000And of course, I'm reading the Bible in one year with it.
00:42:36.000Now, this idea of, so I mentioned that because when in meditation, you can hear God, you can hear God, you can allow God to work.
00:42:45.000See, like then when earlier I made glib remarks about Romans, I feel it in my heart straight away, straight in my heart.
00:42:51.000Like I felt when I was in the show that we did last Friday, I made a joke about Romans 13 because it says about submitting to government and human authority.
00:43:00.000And I made jokes about it, but I felt immediately in my heart.
00:43:03.000So I don't think I suffer too much from that numbness.
00:43:30.000I feel very disturbed, and like a lot of things have changed.
00:43:32.000And I don't know how it's going to settle or how it's going to be.
00:43:35.000But I know he was, he's, I feel Christ in it very strongly, inso much as Bear, as I've said before, Bear's love helps me to understand the idea of a love that might otherwise seem abstract unless I found a way of connecting with it through scripture.
00:43:46.000But I am connecting to it through the word.
00:43:50.000So when you, someone like Jesse, sends you that bit of scripture from Ephesians, how do you then put out to work in your actual practical spiritual life?
00:44:01.000When starting to spend time with God, just taking some time, being silent, reading, writing.
00:44:59.000Where me, I'll need to write, I'll have to get it out in some way, which will be writing, working out, doing something.
00:45:08.000Those are some of the best times, though, because those are quiet times with God.
00:45:11.000Like that's where it just develops intimacy.
00:45:16.000So this intimacy, I think, is very important.
00:45:18.000Some of the realizations around the death of Bear helped me to understand that the intimacy that I had with him was something that I would find very difficult to emulate in it or recreate in a human relationship because of fear, control, and trust-based issues.
00:45:35.000I also was able to recognize that in promiscuity and carnality, I was seeking a kind of intimacy.
00:45:43.000There's something that occurs in particular in my experience in fleeting sexual encounters where you might achieve sudden intimacy with a stranger that gives you a kind of artificial shock almost to the field of your being.
00:45:56.000And because it's sexualized and sexuality is in a heightened state, when you receive intimacy there, it's like a type of dark communion, I would say there, Joe.
00:46:07.000And I noticed, in fact, that the erotic aspect of Christ's love, I'm reading this book by this nun called Ruth Burrows called With the Living God.
00:46:19.000She talks about that something about asceticism and denial can bring about that intimacy.
00:46:26.000And I've always thought that we, those of us that have to walk the spiritual path, have to recreate a secular way of saying it would be our own treatment centers.
00:46:35.000You know, where we're going to do all equine therapy.
00:46:38.000Oh, we're going to do painting therapy.
00:49:12.000So when he told me you've caused me harm by what you said, the overview was, it wasn't just what I said, it's what people in a comment section were saying.
00:49:22.000But when you're getting told, you're a piece of shit because you've fucking done this, X, Y, like in sobriety, you take it like you're like, oh my God, I really do feel like a piece of shit.
00:49:31.000Inactive addiction, when someone calls you a piece of shit, you're like, what?
00:50:16.000And I suppose what that indicates to me is in particular, the updates our Lord offered of, you know, removing the category of neighbor or the limited liability of the category of neighbor to make neighbor absolute all humans and to make love without limitation.
00:50:34.000I was thinking today, gosh, what was it I was thinking about when I was reading Job and it's described, really goes in, it's good how it describes Job because he's like, it sounds like he's had a bit of a tough time, I'll say.
00:50:44.000There's like maggots eating his skin while he's laying there and all his lips in that.
00:50:48.000And it's an image of total desecration.
00:50:51.000And it as with that wonder that one discovers when getting into the Old Testament seems to foreshadow the coming of Christ in Job's words, who can go into the dirt and come out again.
00:51:11.000And you feel the kind of The hum of the latent Christ moving like an all-consuming light into the darkness of our condition.
00:51:26.000And I reckon a that when you're able see, when someone says to me, I don't like what you said or what you've done, and believe me, I deal with a significant amount of that Like I want to sort of partly want to really fight, I feel like I'm in a fight and I feel a bit like I kind of are in a fight.
00:51:48.000Certainly the depiction of the end times in Revelation bears a lot of resemblance to battle.
00:51:56.000Do you feel like when someone says that to you, they're trying to control control trying to say, hey, no, I can say whatever I want to say.
00:52:04.000Like you're trying to control, destroy, constrain me.
00:52:32.000And that's what I love about being involved in 12 steps and in particular in sponsorship relationships and particularly the sort of great joy, if I may say, publicly of sponsoring someone like Joe, who has like a fierce intelligence and wild emotion.
00:52:46.000Like it's like, oh my God, what are we going to do about this?
00:52:50.000Like what I like is that I have to go, all right, my mind will not be sufficient for the, or at least I could describe it perhaps, but I can't resolve it.
00:53:01.000So in the program, I will can even now literally can see that what's required in your situation with your man there is a proactive call or even a meeting.
00:53:12.000Like that thing that I learned from Alfie there, my second sponsor, right?
00:53:17.000I always, if someone's telling me what to do, I think, I'm not fucking doing that.
00:53:28.000And Jake's getting very good at handling me with that, of like sort of showing me, you know, like I'm a dog or something that's come from a bad home.
00:53:34.000Like, so, like, it's all right, you're okay.
00:53:38.000You know, like, like, so, like, you know, but like, so with, I don't have time to feel properly because the instinct kicks in so hard to like, oh, this is that thing where people fuck me off.
00:53:53.000And like, and so with you, though, there, I know you have a similar thing.
00:53:57.000So I think it's, um, you've got to be with that person, actually take it to Christ and sort of like you're not on your own.
00:54:04.000And actually, our Lord, he's so gracious and so generous, he gives us ones where it's not that hard, actually.
00:54:10.000Like, say, sort of with me at the moment, it's like, oh, my in-laws are over, so I have to be an in-laws person that's, you know, that level of politeness and everything.
00:54:19.000You know, and you can't just sort of civilized.
00:54:21.000Yeah, I can't do all my farts that I need to do.
00:54:23.000I've got quite a strong fart commitment that I've had to put on hold for a couple of days.
00:55:27.000No one was saying he weren't all right.
00:55:29.000What people were saying is, is my word, this is what's actually being said.
00:55:34.000In a culture that seems prohibitive towards Christianity, note the indulgence granted to a inverted commas non-native religion.
00:55:46.000Now, you could, of course, argue, geo-historically, that both Christianity and Islam come from the Middle East.
00:55:54.000But in terms of actual the history of Britain, Britain and King Arthur and all that stuff, it became a Christian country some time ago.
00:56:03.000And yet, Christianity and the British flag and all these ciphers and sigils of Britishness are being reduced, curtailed, constrained.
00:56:15.000And the reason for that is, I'll tell you plainly, is because these sigils and symbols are activating power in the native people.
00:56:25.000Since a little old guy called Adolf Hitler, people have been scared when political movements rise up that engage what I might call the sort of land power of the folk.
00:56:38.000Like the folk have this kind of, we're from here.
00:59:17.000And when the state is the center or state subsidiaries, then you end up with a lot of old bullshit everywhere, whether it's the Amelia game or complex systems of conflicting ideology, Islam versus identification with your personal sexuality.
00:59:34.000All of these complicated ideas come from deification of the culture, which is a form of paganism, and pantheonism, which is what's been described throughout the Old Testament as being the fall of the various nations and the fall of individual souls, and Christ came to absolve us of that and has done that, if we will, but accept him, but from a 12-step perspective, which I think lines up pretty nicely with Christianity anyway.
01:00:02.000Now I I can only say this is the beauty of our program.
01:00:05.000When it's me and it's like you know the stuff we were talking about with the dog, my beloved bear, you know, I found it very hard not to be defensive, impossible in fact.
01:00:13.000But when it's you, I don't have to pay no price for it.
01:00:16.000So it's easy for me to say, you've just got to go.
01:01:12.000That's the one, you know, and that's what he did, and that's what they did the first followers.
01:01:16.000And that's what we have to do if we're serious about it and lord alone knows, we'll get the opportunity.
01:01:20.000Um okay, it's time now for us to bring our guest in, because we've kept him waiting and not only is he double h, he's like former special ops, so it's like we're asking for a good chin in, please.
01:01:45.000You'll get additional access to MUG CLUB that's Crowder's gig, Tim Cast that's Tim Pool's racket and Glenn Greenworld's additional content.
01:01:54.000We make content every single week through Rumble because Rumbles support free speech.
01:01:58.000When I was under attack from the British government and the British media, Rumble stood firm, yes, of course, there's crazy people on Rumble.
01:03:26.000And when do you think you're going to finally get around to doing some work on your arms, which come across as a bit weak and thin from where I'm sitting?
01:05:18.000It wasn't until that I had become married and had kids that it became a very serious issue.
01:05:28.000And there's an incident one night where my wife had said, I don't know if I can do this anymore.
01:05:39.000And it was a very hard thing to say because you never want to hear your loved one or someone that you care about be put in so much pain that they have to say it.
01:06:08.000And I progressively just became more and more belligerent.
01:06:17.000The alcohol had taken a lot more of an effect once I got home.
01:06:23.000And I wasn't able to accept that I had a problem.
01:06:26.000So that night, as a team, we made the decision to completely stop drinking.
01:06:34.000And it turned out to be the best decision that we could have possibly made because it allow us to grieve, to feel pain, and not mask it through the use of alcohol or by any other means.
01:06:53.000And it allowed us to feel what we needed to feel in order to grieve, to be upset, to be happy, and not have that purely just be a byproduct of a foreign substance.
01:07:13.000It allowed us to find a way to cope with life because life is very difficult and to not cope with alcohol or other substances,
01:07:27.000but it allowed us to do it as a unit, do it together, do it collectively through faith, through communication, and to set the example for our kids leading up.
01:07:43.000So your wife stopped drinking at the same time.
01:10:34.000That was a little more difficult because he stayed with us for about a month or two before he passed.
01:10:49.000And to see his cognitive and physical decline during that time and to be his full-time caregiver was just a difficult thing to see to see your hero in such a weakened state.
01:11:14.000It's just a very harsh reality that no one is invincible.
01:11:25.000And it was difficult to accept that, which ultimately led to me just trying to bury everything, cover everything, and ultimately just not deal with any of it.
01:11:48.000And you reach a certain point where when you avoid things and you allow things to bottle up, it eventually expresses itself outwardly, whether you know it or not.
01:12:02.000And then when your surroundings are affected, you think everybody else is the problem.
01:12:12.000Since we made the decision to stop drinking and focus more on our mental well-being, our spiritual well-being, our physical well-being, life has become fun again.
01:12:29.000You get to see the joy and the light that life can be if you choose it to be that for you.
01:13:00.000It may be very privileged or you may be given certain opportunities that others may not.
01:13:05.000But your perspective and how you see these things is completely up to you.
01:13:12.000What do you suppose, Preston, is the price of having happiness be a choice rather than something that is dictated by external and sometimes arbitrary circumstance?
01:13:24.000What do you think is the cost of that freedom?
01:13:36.000When you, like, say, It sounds like you've had like some serious trauma and some difficulties and you've gone through like what kind of what kind of military, if you don't mind me asking, were you in?
01:13:47.000So I was in the Army and I was a Green Beret.
01:13:49.000So the Navy has Navy SEALs, Army has Green Berets, and then which is just below Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, things of that nature.
01:13:59.000So we're pretty specialized in the things that we do.
01:14:05.000What we do lack, in my personal opinion, not speaking in absolutes, is How we deal with loss, how we deal with the experiences that we see and deal with overseas.
01:14:21.000A lot of that is shake it off, have a drink, get over it.
01:14:26.000Because you have to have a certain type of mental state being in that profession to be effective.
01:14:35.000You cannot allow those things to alter your mental state or your decision making.
01:14:40.000You have to be very hardened in a way where in the moment it can't affect you.
01:14:49.000But behind closed doors, no one's invincible.
01:14:56.000You know, I find it very interesting to hear someone new to and new in recovery taking on board principles like in a 12-step model, which is, I think, the first effective and successful model for bringing about abstinence, forces bringing about sustained abstinence.
01:15:21.000The idea that we have, like Joe and Dave are equally and in some instances more qualified than me to describe this information that was freely given by other people, is like starts with crisis, starts with, I have to honestly admit, there's a problem, there's a problem.
01:15:43.000The second portion is to recognize the hopelessness of your condition with and without alcohol and then to recognize that things can improve, but they won't improve using your own power and your own will and your own ideas.
01:16:02.000That you're fundamentally, I learned recovery in a very secular environment, like from a treatment center I went to was run by an atheist.
01:16:11.000So they'd done that very elegant trick, I'd have to call it, of like removing God from a process that's entirely about God, entirely about sort of like removing, I don't know, like sort of red from Liverpool with all respect to Everton fans.
01:16:31.000So like what I felt was, and what I feel is that what's useful from a secularized version of a 12-step program is anyone, whether you believe in God or not, can recognize when their life's in total chaos.
01:16:46.000Some people are able to say, I suppose it's possible.
01:16:50.000I mean, Dave was a heroin addict and he doesn't use drugs anymore.
01:16:54.000That's, you know, even if it's only that, even if it's only that I believe that Dave used to take drugs and doesn't now, even that is a demonstration of the possibility of change.
01:17:04.000The third step, making the decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, is an interesting and pivotal moment, beautifully collapsed by Tim M, who we often cite on this podcast, into the idea that step three, made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understood God, simply means now do step four.
01:17:27.000That means the inventory steps of writing down every resentment you've ever had.
01:17:33.000Well, firstly, write down all the people and then you'll understand who are the major players.
01:17:37.000You know, your mum, your dad, people that broke your heart, people that beat you up, people that, you know, we all know the my sponsor calls it the museum of resentments that all of us, I can show you around and go, she broke my heart.
01:18:18.000Three, a decision to turn it over to God who understood God, God.
01:18:21.000And then again at seven, when it says, humbly asked him to remove these shortcomings, humbly ask God to remove these shortcomings, it becomes like necessary for me to understand.
01:18:32.000And when I ask you that question about what do you think is necessary to make a choice to have it, because I do know that's true.
01:18:37.000I do know that we are the participants in the creation of our own reality, that God didn't create us for no reason.
01:18:57.000Pretty much from step two on is all about God, right?
01:19:03.000I mean, from it, have you ever heard, like, if you're struggling with the conception of God, you don't have a second-step problem or a third-step problem, you have a first-step problem.
01:19:14.000And it's about the fact that, man, you haven't been broken enough.
01:19:19.000You know, you don't haven't really conceded.
01:19:23.000And it's like, and they use the analogy, I mean, do you complain when you get thrown a life raft, whether it was red or blue, or what kind of, no, you're drowning.
01:19:33.000The book even uses that, the desperation of a drowning man.
01:19:37.000And we would always used to say, hey, give me desperation over willingness any day.
01:19:50.000You know, and so if you're sitting there trying to do second, third step God collages and stuff like that, trying to define your God and all that stuff, it's like, man, do you really understand your condition?
01:20:04.000You know, because if you really do and you're drowning, then you're going to be desperate for a solution.
01:20:10.000And so if there's a chance that whatever Joe believes or there's a possibility, and it's not even saying that you define God, honestly, in the steps, it just says that you are willing to believe that it's something greater than yourself.
01:20:23.000Joe, starting where Dave has taken us with regard to desperation there, and in particular, desperation versus willingness, can you give us some of your first thoughts about Preston's share?
01:20:34.000Yeah, I mean, what springs to mind for me, right?
01:20:37.000It's like 12 step, the 12 step program assumes you've already exhausted all other resources.
01:20:48.000So in likes of the treatment center, you're saying where they've removed God and that, it's like, you know, if through traumatic events and everything else, I've learned to self-medicate with alcohol, it's even been encouraged or whatever.
01:21:01.000And then with sufficient reason, realize, fuck, this is coming with consequences.
01:21:09.000Then maybe with the use of a treatment center like that, one you was talking about there, you sober up and you learn a bit of your condition about your traumas and all whatnot and how to process things moving forward.
01:21:20.000If then after that you still drink again, that's hopeless.
01:22:08.000See, God could and would if he was sought.
01:22:12.000Then you're willing to take step three, I think.
01:22:15.000And after step three, you'll do whatever you're told, really, wouldn't you?
01:22:19.000Because, you know, you understand the hopelessness of the condition and the fatality if you carry on.
01:22:26.000There's actually illuminated an aspect of my own recovery that I've not seen as clearly before that I went into treatment only wanting to get clean temporarily.
01:22:40.000Like, oh, my career, I'm not going to, I didn't have a career.
01:22:43.000I wasn't famous or anything when I stopped taking drugs.
01:22:45.000I was like, oh, you're not going to have a career if you don't get clean.
01:24:00.000People are not like, ah, you know, so like until it actually comes to the point where you're confronted with the difficult death of your parents, you've not got no motivation to confront deep, deep, unaddressed pain.
01:24:16.000And then from that point in, you become willing to remove the anesthesia and obstacle which alcohol represented.
01:24:27.000But so it's a year of living in that recovery.
01:24:30.000And I suppose I'm still kind of, because I'm so 12-step devout.
01:24:34.000Whenever someone's not 12-step, Dave, I always feel like, oh my God, are they going to be all right?
01:24:44.000Like, they don't have monopoly on recovery or God or any of that.
01:24:48.000So like, I know it's not right, but it's just so a part of my life that it's hard to think of not doing the 12 steps and being in recovery, even though I know, hey, people can just go to church.
01:25:01.000And I know tons of people that just do church and do other things and they're living a spiritual life.
01:25:07.000I think the difference for me, though, is going, I don't really consider it recovery unless it's a spiritual means of the part of it is at least spiritual.
01:25:21.000Otherwise, I consider it like lifestyle change, abstinence, you know, just like health wellness.
01:25:30.000That's how I would consider it, unless it's a spiritual, if there's part of it that's a spiritual path, then I'm like, okay, that's really recovery.
01:25:40.000I mean, like, that there is a relationship with God that they're growing in.
01:25:45.000And whether that means it doesn't have to look traditional, but if they're not committed to spiritual, to having a relationship with God and growing in it, then I don't, in my mind, not saying this is the right definition, but in my mind, I'm like, okay, that's a separate category than recovery.
01:26:06.000What do you think about that, Preston?
01:26:08.000Do you note in this year of transition and abstinence undertaken with your wife that your relationship with God has changed?
01:26:19.000Has God begun to occupy the place once occupied by alcohol?
01:26:31.000The reason for that is because the majority of us Two things that you touched upon is that it usually takes a very serious incident of happening to someone close to you to shake you awake, or you have to hit rock bottom or something happening to you personally that has you make that decision.
01:26:54.000God is going to allow these things to happen to you.
01:27:14.000So me saying I'm in recovery or I am sober is still very formed for me to say.
01:27:21.000So when I do say that, it's just very new, right?
01:27:27.000So he has led me down a path and I have accepted it that he is guiding me down a path that is better than I could have ever imagined or planned for myself.
01:27:42.000And I wasn't able to see that before because for me, through alcohol, I was able to be numb to everything.
01:28:09.000And through my faith and through my trust in him, good, bad, and different, I'm able to be confident that this season or this chapter of life, how difficult it may be, it's for a specific purpose.
01:28:26.000And he is challenging us, just like in the gym, you challenge yourself in order to grow stronger, in this sense, stronger in your faith.
01:28:35.000And he will test your faith through trials and saying, just like when he had Peter walk on water, he says, if you trust in me, you will be able to do this.
01:28:47.000And I said, okay, let's see what this whole thing is about that people love so much.
01:28:56.000And through this whole process, it has just been an amazing season of peace and happiness and knowing good, bad, and different, he's going to look after us and trust that whatever we go through, it's going to be amazing.
01:29:52.000And I said, it would be so easy to do this right now.
01:29:57.000But it is not worth losing her trust and her respect over a glass that is going to do nothing but make me feel bad.
01:30:08.000So through that promise that I made with her, myself, and with God, it has gotten significantly easier with time.
01:30:18.000Through lifestyle changes, through my faith, I still have resources, I guess you could say, at my house that if I wanted to drink, I could.
01:30:28.000But it's so empowering to know that I can walk by it each and every day and it has no power over me.
01:30:45.000Like, hey, so like, what we have to think about, I think, I might as well say it because I would say it in real life recovery is my concern would be the fact that it's commenced in conjunction with your partner would be where God's going to give you some lessons.
01:31:00.000Like, because I know that any time that I, because of the B in the ABCs, there, any human power thing, that like me, all of us in a marriage, you know, one flesh and all, we're going to depend and rely on our partner.
01:31:29.000For me, it can be as easily understandable as there's things I can talk to Dave about that I cannot take to her, that I can't take to her.
01:31:38.000And I've also just again and again in my own recovery been shown that when I rely on anything at all, I get so the thing that happened to me is, of course, I'm 23 years into this, less time than Dave, but it's still a big chunk of time.
01:31:56.000And like what happened in my life is my identity just again, just broke.
01:32:03.000And when that happened, I was like, oh man, there's another level to this.
01:32:07.000I was reliant on that, even though I'm clever.
01:32:11.000So I know don't worship your own identity as a famous person because that's stupid and made up.
01:32:16.000I kind of understood it theoretically.
01:32:19.000But then when it changed from Russell Brand, womanizer, great star, to Russell Brand rapist, I was like, whoa, hold on.
01:33:07.000And like, you know, hopefully it won't be in a way that causes painful, painful, costly consequences.
01:33:14.000But in the end, there are no painful, costly consequences because it seems like anything in tour can happen and you'll be like, all right with it.
01:33:22.000Like when Sandy Beach says that, when Sandy Beach goes, if you're in the woods and your car breaks down and there's no one around for miles and you don't have a phone, you get to the point where you're like, oh, how are we getting out of this one, God?
01:33:34.000You know, like sort of a cheerful, oh, this will be interesting.
01:35:04.000I need a new job rather than being Rambo.
01:35:07.000And now, now we're going to have to reap the crazy consequences of that.
01:35:11.000Excuse me, that was just an alarm going off in my soul before me and Preston have what's going to be a bench press competition or whatever.