Stay Free - Russel Brand - UK in Freefall as Keir Starmer Opens the Door to 15-Minute Cities — SF675

00:00:07.000 Ladies and gentlemen, Russell Brand trying to bring real journalism to the American people.

00:00:17.000 Hello there, you awakening wonders.

00:00:18.000 Thanks for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:00:21.000 First of all, I'm going to talk to you about a home office disaster, an attempt to use gaming language and iconography to create an online viral sensation to help us to not stick it to the man but abide by the intentions of the man.

00:00:34.000 It's another example of the UK government hopelessly out of step with the people that they've been elected to govern.

00:00:41.000 We're going to look at some brilliant stand-up comedy from Jim Brewer.

00:00:44.000 It's a wicked bit of stand-up he did during the with the within the COVID period and he's really captured something physical that's fantastic.

00:00:44.000 I love it.

00:00:53.000 We're also going to be talking about Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London and Proud Fabian.

00:00:59.000 Do you know about the Fabian Society?

00:01:01.000 Are they the Illuminati's Illuminati?

00:01:03.000 You know how like there's comedians, comedians.

00:01:05.000 Is it a conspiracy group that are so under the radar we don't even know about them?

00:01:09.000 But first of all, let's have a look at this from Jim Brewer.

00:01:13.000 And then the news cockatoos come out.

00:01:18.000 Watch the news.

00:01:19.000 Watch the news.

00:01:32.000 Trust the experts.

00:01:34.000 Trust the experts.

00:01:38.000 Trust the science, trust the science.

00:01:42.000 CDC, CDC, Dr. Felchie, Dr. Felchie.

00:01:47.000 Mask on, mask off, two shots, one shot, mask on, two masks.

00:01:53.000 Comply, comply.

00:01:57.000 Six foot safe.

00:01:59.000 Do what you are told.

00:02:01.000 It is for your safety.

00:02:07.000 I think what I enjoy about that, right?

00:02:09.000 Not just the content of it, but like someone that's not a dancer really using an he's got an unusual body and he's got sort of a bit of a fraughtness to him, but he's used his body there.

00:02:19.000 When he transitioned from that into the Nazi walk, that's sort of dance. 0.85

00:02:24.000 And I like that.

00:02:25.000 I like the way that Jim Brewer used his body and I liked how sort of you know, craft.

00:02:30.000 That was nice craft, I think.

00:02:32.000 He's always had amazing facial expressions.

00:02:35.000 Did he have a big radio show?

00:02:36.000 Was he a big radio guy for a while?

00:02:37.000 Is that why he's famous?

00:02:38.000 I mean, a ton of movies like Half Baked, Half Baked.

00:02:38.000 He's in his movies.

00:02:42.000 Is this a show on addiction?

00:02:44.000 Yeah, half baked.

00:02:44.000 Huh?

00:02:45.000 Half baked.

00:02:46.000 Yeah, I met him before.

00:02:46.000 Jim Brewer.

00:02:48.000 I met him at a Bobby Kennedy thing when Robert Kennedy was running as an independent.

00:02:53.000 He's proper funny.

00:02:54.000 He's a good guy, isn't he?

00:02:55.000 As well.

00:02:56.000 All right, let's have a look at this.

00:02:59.000 I saw this earlier in the week, and I'd never heard of Michael Parenti, but I like this quote that I saw that Jimmy Daudery posted.

00:03:07.000 And you can see it's posted on X by someone called DD Geopolitics.

00:03:11.000 People who think they're free in this world just haven't come to the end of their leash yet.

00:03:14.000 You will have no sensation of a leash around your neck if you sit by the peg.

00:03:17.000 It's only when you stray that you feel the restraining tug.

00:03:20.000 And I suppose that's, God, man, I feel that.

00:03:25.000 I feel the restraining tug sometimes.

00:03:27.000 I felt it around my neck.

00:03:28.000 And you'll feel it no more strongly than in the beautiful islands of the United Kingdom where 15 minute cities are being penned out and rolled out.

00:03:39.000 People are in a sort of open jail in the UK right now.

00:03:42.000 Labour has approved a rollout of Stalinist.

00:03:44.000 You know, I'm sure they're not marketing it as that.

00:03:46.000 15 minute cities across the UK, the Telegraph can reveal ministers have said they will allow councils to use driver license databases to impose fines on drivers who fall foul of traffic filters which restrict driving in certain areas.

00:03:57.000 The control on motorists, which was to be implemented for the first time in Oxford City Centre later this year, have been described as perversed by motor groups.

00:04:03.000 The 15-minute city is based on the idea that a person can access amenities within a quarter of an hour by walking or cycling.

00:04:09.000 In some cases, this could result in traffic restrictions being important for drivers.

00:04:12.000 I actually kind of like the idea of community, but community should be voluntary.

00:04:17.000 And increasingly, I realize that the church has to be at the centre of the community, not the state.

00:04:22.000 That there has to be volition and a voluntary spirit in the way that communities are built, not the construction of a bureaucratic deity that imposes control and authority from above.

00:04:35.000 It's a very, very radical proposition, but you can see why a radical proposition is the only one that's likely to work right now.

00:04:42.000 For a long time, I heard about the Fabian Society.

00:04:44.000 They're meant to be a left-wing organisation.

00:04:46.000 Their logo is a wolf in a sheep's clothing, which is sort of kind of thing that I've been accused of.

00:04:51.000 And when I was more associated with the left, I guess when I was an actor and those kind of things, people said that because I was generally supportive of left-wing politics and left-wing politicians, and that's why I suppose when, as is happening now, the culture war reaches a sort of fever pitch with the events in Minnesota and stuff, I still maintain a kind of sympathy for what I consider to be the motives of compassion that likely lead the people that are protesting around ICE and stuff.

00:05:19.000 Here though, is current Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announcing that he's a proud Fabian.

00:05:26.000 The Fabians are said to be a group comparable to, say, I don't know, the skull and bones groups that grew out of American academia that provide alliances and fraternity for political figures who, in spite even of being members of different parties, have the same systems and sets of control.

00:05:44.000 The Fabian Society, I don't know what the mystery component is.

00:05:49.000 And so often you hear that, oh, this is just this or this is just that.

00:05:52.000 And even from me, so I was like, you know, like an obvious example being when I was married to Katie Perry and subsequently people say he's her handler, or this 33 tatoo or that, and when I hear that kind of stuff I'm like, oh no man, I know there's nothing behind that.

00:06:05.000 So maybe maybe the Fabian Society are just trying to help.

00:06:07.000 Anyway, here's Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and authoritarianism by the back door lubricant although I didn't mean that to sound as sort of homoerotic as it did, but hey, maybe there's a reason for it advocating for the Fabian Society or at least admitting to being a member of it. 0.76

00:06:22.000 My name is Sadiq Khan, I'm the mayor of London and a proud Fabian.

00:06:26.000 I'm here at the annual conference of the Fabian Society in the Guildhall where I've delivered a speech saying that us progressives, us Fabians, should be talking up the benefits of immigration.

00:06:40.000 I think, as a country, we've allowed the far right and others to frame this debate with hatred, hysteria and fearmongering being used, and I think we've got to, as progressives, talk up the benefits of lawful migration with three principles.

00:06:56.000 Progressives is being used there as a kind of positive term, but the idea of progress that human beings are on an upward trajectory on our own fuel is one of the illusions that needs to be shattered with the most urgency.

00:07:09.000 A Better word is entropy.

00:07:12.000 We are in decay and decline, and the assumption that because of I don't know AI and technology more broadly, we're superior to our ancient ancestors.

00:07:20.000 Don't behold even a 10-second scroll on X, does it?

00:07:24.000 Before it starts to fold up and fall down.

00:07:27.000 This is a time of mass decline and mass deterioration.

00:07:30.000 And you will find academics and intellectuals anywhere who tell you, No, no, no, poverty has actually been reduced and less people have got tuberculosis.

00:07:37.000 We eliminated malaria.

00:07:38.000 You're happy.

00:07:39.000 You're happy.

00:07:40.000 You're having the time of your life.

00:07:42.000 You love your town and your life.

00:07:45.000 And you know that it isn't true.

00:07:47.000 You know that you're experiencing decline.

00:07:49.000 And the myth of progress, like the idea of individualism, are one of those broad terms that are used to ensure that we remain precisely within the tethered pen described by your man Michael Parenti and now being instantiated at the level of the city by Keir Starmer through these cities.

00:08:07.000 And here is Kier Starmer.

00:08:09.000 This time, I don't know what he's TikToking about now, but you know, quite frequently, your TikToks about his own little ticky ticker.

00:08:20.000 If I could do it, then whack on you. 0.94

00:08:22.000 Get up and make it work. 0.94

00:08:24.000 Ain't no way that I'm sitting around.

00:08:25.000 It's no one ever.

00:08:26.000 I'm picking the first.

00:08:27.000 People told me that one maker knew that I had the skits as fur.

00:08:31.000 Brandon came out of mud like Roddy. 0.96

00:08:32.000 I had nobody.

00:08:33.000 I came from dirt. 0.99

00:08:34.000 Shooking fuck up in the work. 0.98

00:08:36.000 Hitting a picture whenever I nearest one, call me a rapper. 0.98

00:08:39.000 Oh, they shouldn't have done that.

00:08:41.000 Why would they bother?

00:08:42.000 Why would they bother to do things like that?

00:08:44.000 The music's catchy.

00:08:45.000 Yeah, what a cool dude.

00:08:48.000 I think actually we've been wrong about that guy.

00:08:50.000 He knows what he's talking about.

00:08:51.000 He struck me there as really being in control.

00:08:53.000 Did you see him around that military equipment?

00:08:55.000 He knows what he's doing with a fuselage in his hands, that fella.

00:08:58.000 Just let him near a tube and he knows what to do.

00:09:00.000 God love Keir Starmer.

00:09:02.000 Let's pray for him.

00:09:03.000 Well, okay, we're going to have a quick message now from one of our partners.

00:09:06.000 We'll be back after that with Crack On, our recovery program, where we talk about the struggle of just living in this crazy old world.

00:09:14.000 Before that, though, here's a quick message from one of our partners.

00:09:18.000 Do you want to support me?

00:09:19.000 No, I don't.

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00:09:21.000 Support me and support Rumble Premium.

00:09:23.000 You won't only be supporting me, you'll get additional access to Mug Club, that's Crowder's Gig, Tim Cast, that's Tim Poole's racket, and Glenn Greenwald's additional content.

00:09:31.000 Join us on Rumble Premium.

00:09:33.000 We make content every single week through Rumble because Rumble supports free speech.

00:09:37.000 When I was under attack from the British government and the British media, Rumble stood firm.

00:09:42.000 Yes, of course, there's crazy people on Rumble. 0.67

00:09:44.000 There's crazy people everywhere. 0.98

00:09:45.000 There's a crazy person living under this hat.

00:09:47.000 That doesn't mean we shouldn't have the right to speak freely together.

00:09:50.000 By supporting Rumble Premium, you're supporting me and content creators like me.

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00:10:05.000 In the meantime, stay free.

00:10:09.000 Hey, are you playing anywhere?

00:10:11.000 Oh, yes, I am.

00:10:12.000 Hey, come and see me at, thank you, Jake, at the, no, don't see me there.

00:10:18.000 My name is.

00:10:19.000 No, you can't see Lucidine.

00:10:20.000 Can't wait.

00:10:21.000 No, not there.

00:10:22.000 Hang on.

00:10:22.000 No, you can't make direct events.

00:10:24.000 Wait, no, this is no, hang on a second.

00:10:26.000 You can come and see me.

00:10:28.000 Number one.

00:10:28.000 Yes.

00:10:30.000 Come and see me perform my show.

00:10:32.000 A funny thing happened on my way to church where I talk about my apostasy.

00:10:36.000 It's not so much that I joined a church, it's more that I left one.

00:10:40.000 Come and see me to the church of Satan that is the culture. 1.00

00:10:45.000 So, yeah, come and see me do that.

00:10:47.000 This podcast is not allied with nor endorsed by any particular 12-step fellowship.

00:10:53.000 Although we may reference their literature, we do not represent these organizations.

00:10:58.000 The primary purpose of this podcast is to provide additional support to men and women who walk the path for recovery.

00:11:05.000 We share our personal experience of the 12 steps in the hope that others can benefit.

00:11:09.000 Take what is useful.

00:11:11.000 Disregard what isn't.

00:11:12.000 Apologies in advance for any offences caused.

00:11:15.000 Any other problems, take them to your God and to your sponsor.

00:11:20.000 Nicely read, beautifully played there, Jake.

00:11:22.000 This is indeed from a piece of AA literature, the AA 12 and 12, which is the kind of second cornerstone or foundational document after the peerless big book, although some people actually do prefer the 12 and 12.

00:11:41.000 It says here in the 12 and 12, I'm talking about step seven, there's a lot of writing about humility.

00:11:47.000 Check out this.

00:11:48.000 In all the strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, our crippling handicap has been our lack of humility.

00:11:54.000 We had lacked the perspective to see that character building and spiritual values had to come first and that material satisfactions were not the purpose of living.

00:12:03.000 Quite characteristically, we've gone all out in confusing the ends with the means.

00:12:08.000 Instead of regarding the satisfaction of our material desires as the means by which we could live and function as human beings, we had taken these satisfactions to be the final end and aim of life.

00:12:19.000 True, most of us thought good character was desirable, but obviously good character was something one needed to go on with the business of being self-satisfied.

00:12:26.000 With a proper display of honesty and morality, we'd stand a better chance of getting what we really wanted.

00:12:31.000 But whenever we had to choose between character and comfort, the character building was lost in the dust of our chase after what we thought was happiness.

00:12:38.000 Seldom did we look at character building as something desirable in itself, something we would like to strive for, whether our instinctual needs were met or not.

00:12:48.000 We never thought of making honesty, tolerance and true love of man and God the daily basis of living.

00:12:55.000 This lack of anchorage to any permanent values, this blindness to the true purpose of our lives produced another bad result.

00:13:01.000 For just so long as we were convinced that we could live exclusively by our own individual strength and intelligence, for just that long was a working faith in a higher power impossible.

00:13:12.000 This was true even when we believed that God existed.

00:13:16.000 We could actually have earnest religious beliefs which remained barren because we were still trying to play God ourselves.

00:13:22.000 As long as we placed self-reliance first, a genuine reliance on a higher power was out of question.

00:13:29.000 That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do God's will, was missing.

00:13:35.000 Then my favorite, one of my favorite lines in the 12-step literature.

00:13:39.000 For us, the process of gaining a new perspective was unbelievably painful.

00:13:46.000 And that's the point that I'd like to pick up with.

00:13:48.000 I'm joined, as always, by beloved Joe M and the great Dave F. Thanks for joining us today.

00:13:55.000 You're welcome.

00:13:56.000 It's your podcast.

00:13:57.000 I'm not in charge of it.

00:13:58.000 And also, we have a very, very special guest indeed, all the way from Glasgow, not that he ever mentions it, via the tenements, the crackhouses, the burning cars, and the old firm rivalries.

00:14:13.000 Drug smuggler turned Harley Street counselor to the stars, Mark Dempster, for these purposes known as Mark D. Thanks for joining us, Mark.

00:14:24.000 Yes, good to be here, guys.

00:14:26.000 Good to be here.

00:14:27.000 It's lovely for you to join.

00:14:29.000 And an early indication of your legendary humility.

00:14:36.000 What do you think about that reading, mate?

00:14:37.000 And like, you don't just counsel drug addicts, do you counsel non-drug drug addicts as well?

00:14:42.000 How do you use these principles counseling them?

00:14:45.000 Yeah, well, well, most, but most are, most of the people I see here are addicts in one form or another, gamblers, drugs, alcohol, sex.

00:14:57.000 You know, sometimes it can be, you know, sometimes it can just be anxiety or sort of trauma that they suffer with, but but generally they've all got really addictions and uh, and I practice the sort of, I try and practice the sort of principles of the program and the work that I do as far as like, trying to lead them to well, try and encourage them to um, to to have an open mind and embrace like,

00:15:26.000 whether it's 12-step processes or um, you know, various processes to keep them connected with people that can help them.

00:15:35.000 It's very interesting because when you're a person that's in recovery yourself and you make a living in recovery, which I suppose to a degree applies to me as well, there's some complications, I think, inherent in that. 0.94

00:15:50.000 Shut up. 0.95

00:15:51.000 Even in that reading just then was like the bit where it says it sort of tells you fundamentally that you have to rely on God. 0.97

00:16:00.000 And don't that make it a kind of difficult process to undertake in a secular setting?

00:16:06.000 like a council session mark yeah yeah yeah yeah, and and and Russell with that.

00:16:13.000 That conflict right, is definitely.

00:16:16.000 It's uh historically, if I think about my life I I monetize my drug use right, and i've also monetized my recovery right.

00:16:28.000 So i've um.

00:16:31.000 But you know and obviously I try to well, not obviously, but i've often right a lot of therapists here in Harley Street will give no information really about 12-step groups or smart meetings or or sort of Buddhist traditions or whatever it might be, or Christian groups that practice the 12-step because they want to keep the client to their self.

00:16:59.000 They want to keep monetizing because they know.

00:17:02.000 They know that if the client starts to get well, starts to go to 12 steps, they're no longer needed, maybe right.

00:17:11.000 So i've always worked on the principle right, that you've got to give the client as much information that's going to help them recover as possible, because if you let them go, let them find whatever information they need to hear, then they'll tell other people that they've seen you, you know.

00:17:31.000 So it comes back in a different way.

00:17:34.000 We're going to um hear Mark's story, his experience, strength and hope a little later.

00:17:40.000 First though Joe, what do you think about?

00:17:43.000 Uh humility mate, how do you reconcile a healthy, humble attitude, as described in that reading, with uh feeling sometimes of like worthlessness and despair that I think a lot of addicts i'm speaking for myself at least, like I find like sometimes yeah, I was actually today talking about the how unusual it is to feel that, But there are points where I'm so certain, like,

00:18:13.000 and often I'm wrong, so certain about what people should do in a situation, like, you know, with my family dynamics or whatever, or work environment.

00:18:20.000 And there are other points, like I'm actually resting on a real lack of certainty and bewilderment and loss and despair.

00:18:28.000 How are you dealing with that in your own life, Joe?

00:18:31.000 I guess, like, for me, with humility, first you've got to recognize you're wrong.

00:18:36.000 And it's difficult, innit?

00:18:37.000 If you're stuck in pride and you think you're right, I was saying, you're not going to get there till you've done an inventory process. 0.98

00:18:44.000 Quite often you're going to cause some sort of external harm, realize, fuck, I'm wrong. 0.98

00:18:48.000 I mean, it's me. 0.98

00:18:49.000 I'm the problem again.

00:18:51.000 And then that brings you to a place of humility, often followed by some sort of amends where it's like the action, the action you have to take knowing you're wrong to humble yourself to another person.

00:19:02.000 I personally, I found it easy, like in terms of step seven, humbly asking God to remove my defects of character.

00:19:10.000 That was easy for me.

00:19:11.000 I've already been smashed to bits by drinking drugs.

00:19:14.000 And it's made clear the necessity here is a spiritual awakening through the steps.

00:19:18.000 So the process previous to that, you're giving your life to God.

00:19:21.000 Like that's utter trust then, right?

00:19:24.000 But then to take the action and go out and say to other people, look, I used to be like this.

00:19:29.000 I'm not like that anymore.

00:19:31.000 I see that I've caused you harm.

00:19:32.000 Like for me, that was the ongoing act of humility.

00:19:35.000 That was what I found kind of difficult.

00:19:37.000 But it almost doubles down on like, I'm a new person.

00:19:41.000 I'm a new person.

00:19:42.000 And for me, after doing that, the compulsion to drink and use drugs had gone.

00:19:47.000 The thought completely left me.

00:19:49.000 And that was the miracle of it.

00:19:51.000 That's really good how Joe's explained how it's the actions of the program that induced a spiritual change.

00:19:59.000 Because I think, Dave, when I'm talking about spirituality, I reckon part of me automatically starts dealing with mysticism.

00:20:08.000 In my mind, I'm dealing with mysticism.

00:20:10.000 I'm dealing with saying you can't understand it.

00:20:12.000 You can't know it.

00:20:13.000 It's to do with frequencies and interdimensional beings and the true nature of God and ontology.

00:20:18.000 But what Joe's describing is by going and telling people I was wrong, I shouldn't have done this.

00:20:23.000 I should have done that.

00:20:24.000 He became humble, but I've been forced to recognize his own shortcomings.

00:20:28.000 What about you, mate, as someone who's been in recovery for a lot longer?

00:20:34.000 Because you do seem to have a good relationship with humility.

00:20:36.000 I don't ever really see you caught up in nonsense.

00:20:39.000 How are you doing that?

00:20:40.000 Because I'm assuming you're not in a sort of an active and ongoing step nine process, step nine being the step where you make amends for the wrongs that you've done, having listed them, unless to do so would make things worse.

00:20:51.000 How are you doing it, mate?

00:20:52.000 I think really similar.

00:20:54.000 I mean, part of what you read was talking about almost the opposite of humility, being self-reliant, you know, relying on self and how do I become humble?

00:21:06.000 Because you can make yourself appear humble.

00:21:09.000 You can try and feel humble.

00:21:11.000 But like how I actually grow in humility is doing inventory work and then taking action on it.

00:21:20.000 I think it also, you have to say honesty too.

00:21:23.000 I mean, if you're doing a tent step and you're listening out your day at the end of the day, going, okay, am I going to be honest with this?

00:21:31.000 Was I dishonest?

00:21:32.000 I made amends last week for being dishonest.

00:21:34.000 Oh, yeah.

00:21:35.000 Yeah, it wasn't a big thing.

00:21:37.000 But it was, well, I say it wasn't a big thing, but it is a big thing when I ignored it.

00:21:42.000 I mean, it was just a small white lie.

00:21:43.000 Are you able to talk about it?

00:21:45.000 Is it embarrassing?

00:21:46.000 I mean, I can.

00:21:47.000 It is.

00:21:48.000 it's humbling wow so i told i was talking to francesca and she was talking about dave's wife yeah she was talking about um like doing some chores and did one of the kids brush their teeth And I was like, I've taken care of all of it.

00:22:03.000 Immediately in my head, I was like, I didn't.

00:22:06.000 You know, like I don't know if two of the younger ones brushed their teeth and I hadn't taken out the trash and I thought, well, I'll do it in a minute.

00:22:13.000 But I just immediately just lied immediately.

00:22:16.000 Small white lied and think and then just coming back to her and going, hey, I was wrong. 0.93

00:22:21.000 I lied.

00:22:22.000 I don't know how.

00:22:23.000 And then us talking and just flushing.

00:22:26.000 How come I lied?

00:22:27.000 I don't even know right then.

00:22:29.000 But I just being completely honest and taking the action.

00:22:34.000 The action, I think you can't separate action from, you can't separate honesty part of it.

00:22:41.000 And then you can't separate the action from growing in humility.

00:22:44.000 I'd say those two things.

00:22:47.000 And I think when I was a therapist and was like Mark, is it right?

00:22:54.000 Yeah, when I had a hard time, I had a hard time reconciling that with when I was being paid to do it and it was a profession.

00:23:09.000 I had to work a lot harder at making sure that I was doing inventory work that I was, because you're looked at as like you're the professional.

00:23:18.000 I mean, that your job is being this professional recovery person and really had to work at it because I would kind of dog food my own, my own thoughts and think, oh, well, you know, I am, I do have the answers.

00:23:34.000 I do know this.

00:23:36.000 And reality is a lot of times we don't know necessarily what's best.

00:23:41.000 Self, I like the point you make about self-reliance there as well as bringing again to the forefront the contradictions and challenges that many of us face with our working lives and the idea of mission and ministry is something I've encountered a lot since moving into Christian spaces.

00:23:55.000 Like people have to work out like, you know, I'm doing this Christian thing, that Christian thing, about, you know, making money out of it or whatever.

00:24:01.000 It's like an ongoing, like, I don't know, sort of dance or Tyro Pack.

00:24:05.000 But see what that self-reliance concept, like that word in particular, self-reliance, that don't, it's not something that's particularly redolent and evocative for me instantly, but when I think of control, like I'm like, I'm trying to be in control.

00:24:22.000 That's what I like.

00:24:23.000 And when I let go of control, like the trust that's required to, in a life where things that don't seem fair happen, relationships don't seem fair, life seems sort of scary and difficult. 0.98

00:24:37.000 Because I was thinking, why did you tell that appalling lie to your lovely wife, you sick Fritzel like monster? 1.00

00:24:45.000 Fritzel was a man who kept his family in a cellar. 0.98

00:24:47.000 And well, actually, it was one of the worst cases in history.

00:24:50.000 It's hardly Dave Philip.

00:24:52.000 But like, I'm thinking, in it like normally when you're in a domestic dynamic, like you feel like, I just need to be in control.

00:25:01.000 And I can't, I sometimes don't have the presence of mind to tell my wife, no, I've not done that actually.

00:25:06.000 They weren't listening to me and like I freaked out.

00:25:09.000 You know, like I, so I can see why you would have that impulse to just say, yeah, I've taken care of it.

00:25:15.000 I think it's more impressive, actually, that you had the secondary impulse to correct or at least have the program to correct if it's not indeed an impulse.

00:25:23.000 Yeah.

00:25:24.000 And also at that moment, I was feeling insecure.

00:25:27.000 You know, I was feeling insecure.

00:25:28.000 Like, oh man, I don't know what I'm doing.

00:25:30.000 You know, I'll have that come up with me as a father a lot that I'll think, oh man, I'm screwing this up.

00:25:37.000 I'm screwing this up.

00:25:38.000 And so instead of just talking about it, admitting it, I'll hold it and then try and I'll take actions in the self-reliant way instead of doing it in a humble.

00:25:51.000 It's difficult as a father if you didn't grow up in a family.

00:25:56.000 Like I live with my wife.

00:25:57.000 We have three children.

00:25:58.000 We're in the home, and I'm being a father that sometimes makes food and does rides and does normal sitcom dad stuff.

00:26:07.000 To reconcile that with that's not the sort of I don't have good references for what a normal domestic situation looks like and how that runs, in particular a father, and especially a father, because I, you know, saw my dad sporadically and I love you, Ron Brown, you'll be watching, I love your dad but like it's not something that I role modeled when I was, when I was uh, when I was a kid, and that kind of that humility there.

00:26:30.000 It was interesting when you said that um, like the, you didn't feel in control.

00:26:35.000 In our program, we talk a lot about serenity and serenity means, I reckon, the same as seek thee first the kingdom of God.

00:26:44.000 If you're in the right state, if you're in a kind of step 11 state, a conscious contact state, if you're connected to God, you're more likely to behave in alignment with principles like humility and honesty and willingness and all of the kind of sort of irrefutable building.

00:27:05.000 block principles.

00:27:06.000 But it's quite hard to stay in that state.

00:27:08.000 You live in another world in a sense.

00:27:10.000 Joe, and I can see you're living mate a lot in the tension of how to live a working life where, like you know that if you were sort of like looking at Chuck C or someone like one of the great sort of patriarchs of early AA, he would say, when you're doing your job, that is your role, you're not, don't bring any of your disease into that environment.

00:27:29.000 Behave yourself, you know and like.

00:27:31.000 It's quite like, I think, that a lot of people that live a 12-step lifestyle get into apportioning areas of their lives, our lives, where we behave correctly, and then like sort of mad Picture Of Dorian Gray, which is a story by Oscar Wilde, where there's a portrait in the attic that ages and bears his sins, fundamentally like some sort of personalized and static dead Christ and he don't like age,

00:27:57.000 and then one day he gets all crazy and slashes the painting and like he turns immediately into a monster, like so uh, the reason I mentioned that, I suppose, is like how are you getting on with practicing these principles in all your affairs?

00:28:13.000 How you like the 12-step aspect of this, I guess like it's daily thinking.

00:28:20.000 My commitments and obligations aren't to these people, it's to God.

00:28:25.000 Right, I work for God.

00:28:27.000 I work for God.

00:28:28.000 If I'm to be somewhere, turn up on time, do my best, try at least not to upset or offend no one and, like I guess, through daily prayer, right and ask, like step 11, asking God to direct my thinking.

00:28:43.000 I think when I start to fall short of that you have, like your conscience becomes your radar for it.

00:28:49.000 We're gonna stop you there for a moment.

00:28:49.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:28:51.000 If you want to watch the rest of this, click the link in the description and join us on rumble premium.

00:28:55.000 There is a subscription fee for that.

00:28:56.000 I get some of it, remember?

00:28:57.000 You can tip us in Bitcoin these days of all things I know I mean it would be nice.

00:29:03.000 So hey, if you're watching on ordinary rumble, god love it.

00:29:06.000 Uh, we'll see you on friday.

00:29:08.000 But if you've got rumble premium, here's a bit more And you can reach a threshold where you know if you can carry on doing things or not.

00:29:14.000 For example, like the job I do, it's hard.

00:29:16.000 Do you know what I mean? 0.99

00:29:17.000 I work in drainage, lifting up manhole covers full of shit. 0.99

00:29:22.000 And it's early mornings, 12-hour shifts, and that. 0.99

00:29:25.000 And some days I think, I can't do this.

00:29:28.000 I can't do it.

00:29:29.000 And I'm praying and I'm praying to get there.

00:29:31.000 And I'll notice if I start to fall short and I'm upsetting other people.

00:29:37.000 And this ain't for me. 1.00

00:29:37.000 This is a lot of shit. 1.00

00:29:38.000 If I'm moaning about it, if I start complaining, that's a clear indicator that maybe I'm at my limit. 1.00

00:29:43.000 Maybe I've taken what I can from this and I've done as good as I can do with it.

00:29:48.000 And to be, you know, humble and honest would now be time to move on.

00:29:54.000 To be honest with you, I think that's where I'm at.

00:29:55.000 I'm just going through my thought process behind it and the decision that I've come to through a lot of prayer.

00:30:01.000 But it didn't come like God didn't come down from the heavens and say, stop doing that job, Joe, it's not working for you.

00:30:06.000 I've recognized through my shortcomings and a consistency of them, the barriers of resistance I was feeling to it.

00:30:12.000 And I think, well, maybe I'll be best served somewhere else.

00:30:16.000 Maybe I'm useful to people elsewhere.

00:30:18.000 But it's a knowing and that comes from the conscience, that internal radar.

00:30:22.000 But if I'm becoming blocked up with resentment and not having that time of prayer in the morning, I'm going to drift into self-will and try and fix it how I think it should be and find some sort of external solutions.

00:30:33.000 You know what I mean?

00:30:34.000 Yeah, and you might have to look at the fork of the in the road of when you decided to take on a job.

00:30:40.000 That's when one of my early sponsors was really good at like, when did that problem happen really?

00:30:46.000 When did like if you put yourself in a position where you're going to be continually stressed, one might even regard that as an act of self-sabotage.

00:30:54.000 Certainly you can see that in more microcosmic movements like, well, why did you start that argument?

00:31:00.000 Why did you get involved in that situation?

00:31:01.000 Why didn't you do these things?

00:31:03.000 You know, like it's interesting to have a self-destructive condition because one of the things I bear in mind, I think, with my own recovery is that the solutions that drugs and alcohol try to synthesize are spiritual solutions that should be rightly sought.

00:31:18.000 Gabo Mat is very good at describing that, that wanting to anesthetize pain is perfectly understandable.

00:31:26.000 Wanting to escape from misery, perfectly understandable.

00:31:29.000 And if you want to take it ontologically a notch further, wanting to transcend the self and deal in altered states is the right path for a spiritual person.

00:31:40.000 When men are dealing altered states, we're men to be in states of consciousness that are not determined by and dictated to us by the culture.

00:31:48.000 Indeed, the Jung Bill W correspondence that we cite frequently on this podcast, it's only episode two, like it indicates that really and Bill and Bill W's entire purview is about you are a spiritual being and as an addict alcoholic, you are never ever.

00:32:07.000 And again, even the reading we just had then, self-reliance versus God-reliance, you are, in a sense, in a tension with a culture that's trying to get you to solve the problem of spiritual longing by using material and cultural means.

00:32:23.000 In it, yeah.

00:32:28.000 You best counsel us right out of that, Mark, if you think you can.

00:32:31.000 No, no, and of course, you know, obviously Bill Wilson continually struggled around his own sex and love addiction, right?

00:32:41.000 He had multiple, you know, he's having their fear all the time throughout his whole recovery.

00:32:46.000 He wanted to sell the big book almost from the beginning, right?

00:32:50.000 And monetize it.

00:32:52.000 So you can see that he had to be chaperoned around the place, really, in case he got off with one of the newcomers.

00:32:59.000 So he continually struggled with the manifestation of his illness and a variety of different ways.

00:33:07.000 And, You know, and it's interesting that the very early days of Bill Wilson, you know, he was obviously doing a lot of media.

00:33:16.000 He was like, he was having these seances continually, trying to connect with higher.

00:33:22.000 He was trying to sort of, you know, he connected with these unknown soldiers and such like that through his seances.

00:33:29.000 He was very proactive in the sort of the sort of mystical, I guess, that what would be classified as a cult, really.

00:33:40.000 Meanwhile, Dr. Bob was going, oh, Bill, stop, stop.

00:33:44.000 I don't really like this.

00:33:45.000 Please calm down because he was very Christian, wasn't he? 1.00

00:33:49.000 So you had this sort of conflict amongst the pair of them, really.

00:33:56.000 So yeah, absolutely.

00:33:58.000 Well, I suppose you have to return continually to its text because when it tells you, as Joe demonstrated so well earlier, there's a spiritual program of action and not be inclined towards mysticism, which can so easily elide in a self-centeredness and self-worship and occultism.

00:34:15.000 And that's the thing that I always have in the past drifted into until, in a sense, being tethered in Christ, still being sort of beat down and smashed by Christ.

00:34:26.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:34:27.000 Because I suppose it's that aspect of Christ, right?

00:34:30.000 You know, and I guess I suppose we were always going to end up talking about how 12-step culture and philosophy aligns with Christian philosophy.

00:34:38.000 And obviously, it's sort of providential and foundational via the Oxford group that Christian ideas and principles, as well as the culture of America more broadly, it means that it's got a lot of Christian influence.

00:34:53.000 But via young, I suppose, there's mysticism via like Bill W's ongoing seeking and at some degree eccentricity.

00:35:05.000 Like you could see AA going a thousand different ways.

00:35:07.000 And a lot of people say that it's the 12 traditions of AA that have obviously protected it because it's meant it's never been allied to any particular character, least of all its famed founder.

00:35:19.000 And as soon as you get into AA history, you see that there are all manner of peculiar characters cast by the wayside, the infamous Hank, people that did a shitload of work and that were right in the mix and then just didn't kind of really make the cut.

00:35:33.000 It's sort of just a miracle to me to see how God continues to use broken people to carry his message. 0.98

00:35:40.000 And one of the things that excited me in my own like 12-step journey was when this, my mate Carl, told me that a friend of his who is Christian, also an actor, had said that the 12 steps is like early Christianity.

00:35:53.000 That, you know, they're meeting in groups and in homes.

00:35:56.000 And it's like to have a folk culture that's still only 80 years old or whatever is pretty fascinating.

00:36:03.000 And one of the things that I'm most interested in, I suppose, is how the rawness, authenticity, decentralized nature of 12-step groups, its ability to always bring you back down to earth if you try and change it.

00:36:18.000 Like it is something that the church could benefit from and learn from, particularly if your concerns are that churches get over-institutionalized, focused on the wrong things, bewildered and influenced and controlled by the culture, caught up in profit and glow.

00:36:35.000 However, whether you're talking about Catholicism or the various iterations of Protestantism, it's clear that them kind of things are challenges.

00:36:44.000 Mark, before you give us a hit of your insights and wisdom in what I would call a sort of an appropriate chair for the medium, doing what you do so well, you rack on to a weirdo, published author and big issue magazine contributor.

00:37:03.000 Last time we met, we met at a funeral of a friend of ours, beloved Lucy, God rest her eternal soul.

00:37:11.000 She was a particularly interesting individual, dear Lucy, because she wanted them people that first got clean and sober young, that had a family with a lot of like fine people who like sort of elders in 12-step programs.

00:37:28.000 And when she died for reasons connected to drug and alcohol use, it's interesting, isn't it?

00:37:37.000 Like someone that lives as long as she did as an addict and an alcoholic to eventually die.

00:37:43.000 You know, like people that doubtless her life was prolonged by recovery and she helped a lot of people and she was a beautiful person.

00:37:51.000 It's weird that, and it may, like, don't you, what, like, what do you make of them people that come in and out?

00:37:56.000 What do you think about that?

00:37:57.000 What is that?

00:37:58.000 What are we to learn from that?

00:38:00.000 Well, well, there's a sort of surrender that's not happening, isn't it?

00:38:05.000 You know, like when they say you've got to concede to your innermost self, you're an alcoholic, you're an addict, or, you know, there's some type of, you know, because you could say, look, everybody has emotional difficulties in life, don't they?

00:38:21.000 We all go through various things, whether it's divorces or losses or, you know, loss of jobs or whatever it might be.

00:38:28.000 Like, Russell, you just went through a massive, massive, massive thing in the last few years around this whole legal thing.

00:38:35.000 And we all go through various things, but we know at the core of it, don't they?

00:38:41.000 We know at the core that if we take a drink or drug again, or we open up the door, if we let the lion back out the cage, we can put the lion back in.

00:38:53.000 But what I think happens for certain individuals along the way, they think, oh, well, I'll just medicate or I'll medicate on this and I'll come back and I'll do it all.

00:39:06.000 You know, I'll be able to come back.

00:39:07.000 I remember years ago, my friend, when he picked up at 10 years clean, I remember being on the phone to him and I says, I says, and he's, you know, I knew him from the street in Brixton.

00:39:19.000 We were like, supposed to smoke crack together.

00:39:21.000 And I remember him saying, well, Mark, I'll just come back. 0.99

00:39:25.000 If I'm going to have a drink, and I says, but you're a lunatic, Ray. 1.00

00:39:30.000 You're a lunatic. 1.00

00:39:31.000 I used to drink 10 and super whipped me. 1.00

00:39:33.000 We used to smoke crack.

00:39:35.000 And he was like, yeah, but if it doesn't work, I'll just come back.

00:39:39.000 And I remember thinking, for years, for 10 years, you've been sitting in the meeting talking about powerlessness.

00:39:46.000 And actually, you think you've got the power.

00:39:51.000 You think that you can control your drug use.

00:39:53.000 And, you know, of course, if we all thought we could control our drug use, we just have it at the weekends, stop after the weekend, we'd all still be doing, you know, that would have happened years ago.

00:40:03.000 So it's the lie, isn't it?

00:40:06.000 It's part of the denial.

00:40:08.000 But it's also there's some sort of lack of core acceptance that, no matter what happens to us, no matter what happens we get diagnosed with cancer HIV, whatever it might be we cannot use a day at a time.

00:40:27.000 The use of you know, like that a lot of people can stay clean in treatment centers or rehabilitation and then can't stay clean in real life makes me think that really some people just can't be in the culture.

00:40:40.000 And one of the things that fascinates me about the 12 step groups is their avowed positions on politics and cultural and social issues, because the fact is that I believe pretty strongly that addiction as a spiritual condition is exacerbated by and, in fact, fundamentally caused by, a broken system, a system that tells you it can solve your problems,

00:41:09.000 Tells you that self is the answer, tells you that the material world will absolve you, resolve you, heal you, and so I feel like yeah, in the case of people that have been clean for a while and then can't get clean and relapse a lot, for they need to not be in society and quite a lot like I suppose now even a few years, like 23 years, clean and sober, I kind of live a life, or I wouldn't say monasticate right, but it's because you know there's loads of things that are not monastic.

00:41:40.000 But I don't like the abstinence that is deliberately and plainly applied to substance dependency.

00:41:47.000 I have to now apply to everything, whether it's like using my phone, like I reckon I'm not far from being a person that doesn't have a phone, like I think that would be like.

00:41:55.000 Another step is like I don't have a phone, like I don't look at pornography.

00:41:58.000 I'm careful about the kind of food I eat, I'm careful the way I communicate with people, and obviously I've had some pretty severe corrections and lessons in the last couple of years.

00:42:06.000 In particular Dave, though you have a phone.

00:42:11.000 Yeah, what do you mean what?

00:42:14.000 You hardly ever use your phone?

00:42:16.000 Yeah, I don't like.

00:42:17.000 I like if I get into it though, I'll like start looking at it, the same as anything like.

00:42:22.000 Do you remember like, if you've ever gone a long time without looking at pornography like, and it's probably it's been years now, and then if you actually look at it like I've gone like four years, I reckon, like looking at pornography and you think, like you know, like see, because the phone's trying to make you look at pornography like, puts things on, like if you scroll and anything, it will like direct you.

00:42:40.000 Even sometimes I look at things that are totally innocent, like the like a newspaper or whatever, and then the embedded ad will be like a woman in a bikini or whatever, like anyway, it's been a long time since I've looked at pornography, but when you do look at it like, I remember like going fucking no, this is brilliant, why would you not do this all the time?

00:43:00.000 That's always my reaction to negative stimulants is like, as soon as I sort of do, I think oh, it's not as good like that.

00:43:08.000 My, I just don't want to wait, I don't have good.

00:43:14.000 You know, I want instant gratification all of the time and if like through, like a sort of a 10 11, 12 type experience.

00:43:21.000 By 10 I mean continue to take inventory.

00:43:24.000 That means stay aware of when I'm fearful Or excited or overstimulated, and to note it and observe it and share with another person.

00:43:32.000 And by 11, I mean to prioritize, seek thee first the kingdom of God, stay connected to God all the time.

00:43:37.000 And by 12, which is double hard, practice these principles in all your affairs, not just around when you're in particular environments, but in your home environment.

00:43:44.000 Don't be surly, like treat everyone in a loving, godly way.

00:43:48.000 Some people find that easy, other people don't.

00:43:50.000 You know, and you know, and to carry the message.

00:43:53.000 Like, that's my attempts to live that life are thwarted by the endless stimulation and titillations of a thousand different things the whole time.

00:44:05.000 And like, I, whether I'm reading the Bible or the big book, the point I always end up at is we've got to go deeper and harder with this stuff.

00:44:15.000 Like, we've got to create environments.

00:44:19.000 Well, C.S. Lewis would say, if everyone becomes Christian in their job, the world's going to improve. 0.99

00:44:23.000 It's going to be cool.

00:44:24.000 And you might make the case that if everyone lived a good 12-step life, the world's going to radically improve.

00:44:29.000 But how do you stop it getting into the sort of territory of them crazy schemes people get into in 12-steps?

00:44:37.000 Like, we're going to build this building, we're going to build this community, we're going to do this stuff.

00:44:40.000 And it all goes all crazy and wrong, and they get caught up in making money while still acknowledging that it's sort of almost near impossible to live in the world properly and spiritually because the world is almost a continual and over-stimulating trap, Dave.

00:44:55.000 Actually, I think of a good quote from the big book on that.

00:44:59.000 You're head in the cloud with God, but your feet firmly on the ground, whereas work would have you be something of that sort.

00:45:08.000 But I always think of be grounded with your feet on the ground, what we have today.

00:45:15.000 You know, did I do my 86 through 8 in the morning?

00:45:18.000 86 through 88, it's like, and a lot of times I don't.

00:45:21.000 I didn't this morning.

00:45:23.000 I should have.

00:45:24.000 But like, that 86 through 88 gets me just prepared for the day.

00:45:29.000 It's foundational for me.

00:45:31.000 And then I think head in the clouds with God is my thoughts should be with Him, my prayers, my daily communication, communicating with Him throughout the day, thinking of things in a spiritual way, but my feet should be firm in action on what I have that day.

00:45:48.000 When I get too far ahead of myself on stuff like it's not just scheme, like plans, you know, 86 through 88 grounds me in that.

00:46:02.000 If you're not mentioning it, you're gonna have to read it because people won't know what it is.

00:46:07.000 And there you go, I'll give it you.

00:46:12.000 Oh, no, it's 12 and 12.

00:46:14.000 I'm in the wrong, I'm entirely in the wrong literature.

00:46:16.000 Dave, you're gonna have to research them because I'll give you the 12 and 12 instead of the big book.

00:46:21.000 Okay, do you want on awakening?

00:46:24.000 Yeah, yeah, just want me to read it.

00:46:26.000 Oh, that's all right.

00:46:28.000 My kids must have got a hold of my phone.

00:46:32.000 That's not my fan.

00:46:33.000 It's not page three.

00:46:35.000 Look at, look at it, look at page three.

00:46:37.000 If you ever explain to Americans what page three is, it's really good. 0.99

00:46:40.000 Like, we're like, newspapers used to have women with their tits out. 1.00

00:46:44.000 Yeah, what? 0.99

00:46:45.000 What?

00:46:46.000 I can't understand what's wrong with our culture.

00:46:50.000 You got it there, Dave?

00:46:51.000 Or Joe's brandishing a book.

00:46:54.000 Yeah.

00:46:55.000 86 of the AA big book.

00:46:57.000 On awakening, let us think about the 24 hours ahead.

00:47:00.000 We consider our plans for the day.

00:47:02.000 Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest, or self-seeking motives.

00:47:11.000 Under these conditions, we can employ our mental faculties with assurance.

00:47:16.000 For after all, God gave us brains to use.

00:47:18.000 Our thought life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is clear of wrong motives.

00:47:24.000 In thinking about our day, we may face indecision.

00:47:27.000 We may not be able to determine which course to take.

00:47:30.000 Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or decision.

00:47:34.000 We relax and take it easy.

00:47:36.000 We don't struggle.

00:47:38.000 We are often surprised how the right answer comes after we have tried this for a while.

00:47:43.000 What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind.

00:47:50.000 Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times.

00:47:58.000 We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas.

00:48:03.000 Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration.

00:48:08.000 We come to rely upon it.

00:48:10.000 We usually conclude this period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems.

00:48:22.000 We ask especially for freedom from self-will and care to make no request for ourselves only.

00:48:29.000 We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped.

00:48:33.000 We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends.

00:48:36.000 Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn't work.

00:48:40.000 You can easily see why.

00:48:42.000 If circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends to join us in morning meditation.

00:48:47.000 If we belong to a religious denomination, which requires a definite morning devotion, we attend to that also.

00:48:55.000 If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing.

00:49:03.000 There are many helpful books also.

00:49:05.000 Suggestions about these may be obtained from one's priest, minister or rabbi.

00:49:09.000 Be quick to see where religious people are right. 0.99

00:49:12.000 Make use of what they offer.

00:49:13.000 I just want you to carry on.

00:49:14.000 It goes on to the next page as well.

00:49:16.000 I think that, you know, you can't really go beyond rabbi, Joe.

00:49:19.000 I mean, I've taken, I've taken all of the spiritual counsel I can.

00:49:23.000 That's really beautifully read.

00:49:24.000 And with that, Mark, will you give us like 10 minutes of your experience, strength, and hope?

00:49:24.000 Thank you.

00:49:29.000 I'll give you like a couple of minutes and then I'll give you a wind up. 0.99

00:49:33.000 And then I'll be like, oh, Mark, shut up. 0.96

00:49:35.000 Mark, that's enough now. 0.98

00:49:37.000 Stop it.

00:49:38.000 All you want us to do is strap your thumb across the bottom of the screen and offer QR codes to sell sessions.

00:49:43.000 And take it away, beloved Mark.

00:49:46.000 Okay, guys, right.

00:49:47.000 Okay.

00:49:49.000 So basically, I, yeah, okay, right, cool.

00:49:54.000 So I grew up in a family of addiction.

00:49:54.000 Right.

00:49:59.000 I started to, I remember when I was very young, when I first started to smoke weed, hash back then, there was a book called The Great Books of Hashish, and it had every country where hashish was grown, right?

00:50:14.000 From India, Morocco, Lebanon, Turkey, Nepal, Kashmir, all the places where hash came from.

00:50:24.000 And from a young age, when I first started to smoke, it took away, absolutely took away the insecurity.

00:50:34.000 It gave me a sense of belonging.

00:50:38.000 And because my family were quite criminally minded, well, they were, they were criminals, really.

00:50:46.000 It was no big step to start selling drugs from quite a young age.

00:50:51.000 And then from there, I started to go to the countries where, you know, I mean, obviously it took some planning, but I started to go to the countries where it grew.

00:51:03.000 And I went to Morocco, went to India several times and I started to smuggle it. 1.00

00:51:11.000 And there was a period of in my recovery in my using where it was fun.

00:51:20.000 It worked really well.

00:51:23.000 It was a buzz, ecstasy came up.

00:51:25.000 I mean, all the drugs and memories, you know, but eventually I got to a position in my early, like late 20s, where I was stuck in the Golden Triangle actually, because my drug eventually was heroin.

00:51:45.000 And I was in the north of Thailand and I couldn't leave there because I needed to bring a lot of heroin back unless you know because I'd be sick.

00:51:57.000 So, you know, and a few things happened, right?

00:52:00.000 What the catalyst for it is really is I wound up in St. Thomas's Hospital in around 1996.

00:52:12.000 And I had a rock bottom where I shot up some heroin.

00:52:18.000 It was diamorphine, actually.

00:52:19.000 My friend did HIV.

00:52:20.000 Back then, back in London, if you were a registered heroin addict and you had HIV, because the HIV epidemic was massive back then, and people were dying all the time.

00:52:33.000 There was no combination treatment.

00:52:35.000 And so I was in this toilet, I shot up some diamorphine and my friend who had HIV at the time.

00:52:46.000 And I basically, right, basically, the person had put the light off in the toilet, right?

00:52:56.000 And when I came to out of this sort of almost overdose, I thought I was blind. 0.99

00:53:03.000 And I was like, shit, you know, like, I'm blind. 0.97

00:53:08.000 But then there was a small smither of a slither of light at the bottom of the door. 0.99

00:53:13.000 And I thought, and I've seen this sort of light.

00:53:15.000 And then, and in that, and then I got up and I went, put the light on and I sat in that toilet.

00:53:24.000 And I had a moment, or several moments really, where I thought, I thought, I can't do it anymore.

00:53:33.000 And we're going back to this humility situation, you know, just previous to that, a friend of mine that I'd met in rehab, believe this or not, because HIV, because at the time, people who had HIV used to be given diamorphate, they used to be given amples, diamorphine amps, if you were HIV positive.

00:53:52.000 A friend of mine who I was in this detox with, when we got kicked out of the detox, he went and got somebody's blood and injected the blood into himself so that he would get HIV, so that he could get this thing called disability living allowance, which was quite a large payment.

00:54:14.000 You know, it's not like, you know, but not life-changing, that's for sure.

00:54:18.000 But also, so that he could get the heroin. 1.00

00:54:20.000 And I remember when he told me the day that he told me he was going to go and get this girl's blood in order to inject it into himself to give himself HIV, I said, you're fucking, you're crazy, man. 1.00

00:54:34.000 That is nuts. 1.00

00:54:36.000 But that's what he done.

00:54:37.000 And anyway, I was in that toilet.

00:54:41.000 I had this rock bottom.

00:54:43.000 I cried out inside my spirit.

00:54:47.000 I cried out, really, please, God, help me.

00:54:53.000 And a sequence of events happened.

00:54:56.000 Not immediately.

00:54:57.000 In the next months ahead of that, I got arrested, get sent back to, I get sent to Belmarsh Prison, which is a category A prison here in London.

00:55:08.000 I'd been in prison before for smuggling way back in Spain in the later 80s.

00:55:15.000 So I was back in, I was in this prison, And I had to go to Crown Court for this particular charge, which was a violence charge.

00:55:24.000 And, you know, it's mad.

00:55:31.000 That Crown Court, I wound up back in that Crown Court 10, 11 years later doing jury service behind being actually the head of the jury for a trial in the same Crown Court that I was in.

00:55:48.000 But what happened after that?

00:55:51.000 I went to Belmarsh really early in my recovery.

00:55:58.000 I got into this detox.

00:56:00.000 And the reason I got to the detox was to avoid, really to avoid this prison sentence.

00:56:06.000 So my motives for really getting clean were to avoid going to prison for a couple of years.

00:56:15.000 But what happened is I wound up in this detox and I was only in there for two weeks.

00:56:22.000 And my friend said to a guy in the detox said, look, there's a music night on.

00:56:30.000 There's this narcotics anonymity.

00:56:32.000 There's this 12-step narcotics anonymous music night in Brixton.

00:56:40.000 And I went to this music night, right?

00:56:43.000 And it was in a dingy little crypt below this church in Brixton, 6th of December 1996.

00:56:54.000 And in walked this massive celebrity who, a famous guitar player.

00:57:03.000 And he basically, my friend said, that's such and such. 0.99

00:57:08.000 And I said to him, What the fuck? 1.00

00:57:10.000 What would he be doing here in this grotty little church? 1.00

00:57:14.000 He says, because he's in the programme.

00:57:16.000 He's been in the program years.

00:57:19.000 He does this thing every year.

00:57:21.000 He does a free thing in his house in Guildford and he does that for the fellowship.

00:57:29.000 Anyway, I had a poster of this guy on my wall.

00:57:33.000 I'd posted two people I know quite well in recovery now, both of them famous guitarists.

00:57:41.000 And there was something about that.

00:57:43.000 And I wound up going and talking to him.

00:57:45.000 And he was really friendly and humble, you know, like back to the reading as well.

00:57:51.000 And he was like, he said to me, how long have you been in the place, the rehab, the detox I was in?

00:57:57.000 I said, two weeks.

00:57:58.000 And he was like, that's great.

00:57:59.000 Keep on doing what you're doing.

00:58:01.000 And I left that place and I was absolutely buzzing.

00:58:06.000 And I went back to that psychiatric.

00:58:08.000 The detox was in a psychiatric hospital.

00:58:11.000 And me and my friend were the only people that went to this sort of event.

00:58:18.000 That friend of mine never made it.

00:58:21.000 He died a few years later, picked up and died.

00:58:25.000 But, you know, I went on to a rehab and there was something that happened when I was only about three months clean, where I had this really, really, you know, really powerful experience after I'd done a share at a meeting.

00:58:40.000 The first time I'd done a share, and I felt this, and it's really weird because that same hospital where I had that rock bottom, both of my children were born in that hospital, that same hospital.

00:58:55.000 And the toilet, I went, and when both of them were born, I went down to the toilet where I had that rock bottom and I looked in the mirror at myself and I thought, I'm the same man that was in this toilet seven or ten years before who was wanting to kill myself.

00:59:17.000 Was suicidal, I've been suicidal for a few years, lots of suicidal ideas.

00:59:22.000 And yet, here I am.

00:59:24.000 I am absolutely fully the joy of life.

00:59:28.000 I fully rejoy.

00:59:30.000 I've just witnessed my son being born, my daughter being born.

00:59:33.000 And yet, you know, and it is like this having two lives and one life.

00:59:38.000 You know, it's like, you know, and it's really funny.

00:59:42.000 You know, people often ask me, say, why do you still go to meetings?

00:59:46.000 You're 29 years clean.

00:59:48.000 And I say to them, well, look, if you went to church and you met Jesus, right?

00:59:54.000 If you met Jesus and you had that love of Jesus, would you stop going to church?

00:59:59.000 Would you not go three or four times a week?

01:00:02.000 Would you not go seven times a week?

01:00:04.000 And that's what I get from 12 steps.

01:00:07.000 That's when I go to meetings and I connect with my tribe.

01:00:10.000 And it is like my, because as we say in the 12 steps, isn't it?

01:00:16.000 The therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without parallel.

01:00:21.000 What that means is the language of recovery is unique, right?

01:00:25.000 There's nothing like it.

01:00:27.000 It's not greater or lesser.

01:00:28.000 It is a unique language.

01:00:30.000 Who best understands the sensitivities that we have as addicts, the projections, the, you know, so, so what's happened to me in recovery?

01:00:41.000 Look, I created a career.

01:00:43.000 I've wrote books.

01:00:44.000 I've, you know, I've, you know, I'm actually the same person, really, in a lot of ways, except I just don't do a lot of that.

01:00:55.000 I don't smuggle drugs anymore.

01:00:56.000 I don't, you know, do the disco things.

01:00:59.000 Oh, not that, listen, bear in mind.

01:01:03.000 I remember about 10 years ago, I was at Bob Marley's house in Jamaica, nine mile, where Bob Marley was originally born.

01:01:13.000 And I came out of there and there was a rasta stand there smoking a big spliff. 0.93

01:01:18.000 And he said to me, he says, hey, Mon, he goes, you want to smoke?

01:01:23.000 And I did think, I thought, if there's any place in the world you should smoke a joint, it should be outside Bob Marley's house.

01:01:32.000 And then he said, he went on to say to me, he said, he says, man, do you know how we get the cocaine back to England?

01:01:40.000 He says, we put it, we dilute it and we put it, we dissolve the, we dissolve it in water and we've got these particular chemicals that we use.

01:01:49.000 And then we dip the t-shirts in, we press the t-shirt, we vacuum, we put them in the back.

01:01:55.000 And I was like sitting there and as an ex-drug smuggler and a breadhead, really, I was like, I was like, tell me more.

01:02:04.000 My girlfriend's in the car at the time.

01:02:06.000 She's going, Mark, this is a boring, boring conversation.

01:02:10.000 But that, that mind of mine was going, ka-chink, ka-chink, you know, how many t-shirts, how many, you know, how many kilos could you get? 0.90

01:02:18.000 So, so why I'm saying that is regardless of how many years I have been clean and sober, I still have the capability.

01:02:29.000 I know left, left unsupervised, right?

01:02:33.000 And if I had no accountability, no sponsors, no, a lot of friends who keep me sort of like in check, my default position is always dishonest, right?

01:02:49.000 My framework is always to go back to that, to get quick money, to have quick sex, to have, you know, and so I've got to do, I've got to do the opposite.

01:02:59.000 Along the way, I just want to, you know, like I've had, you know, witnessed to my children being born.

01:03:06.000 But there's so many.

01:03:07.000 I've traveled the world.

01:03:08.000 I mean, yesterday I was in Slovenia at a convention.

01:03:14.000 I was just with my son in Japan just before, like just around, just after Christmas.

01:03:21.000 And, you know, I've had so many beautiful experiences in my recovery life, but I've also, right, and this is that, this is, this is a fact is I've created a lot of destruction in my, I've also got the capability and I have because of cross addictions.

01:03:43.000 I've had to do so much work because my my illness, like it's like whack-a-mole.

01:03:49.000 As soon as I close it down with drugs and alcohol, it looks for expression in other ears.

01:03:57.000 So I've had to keep on working to ensure, you know, and, you know, I just want to say that really, you know, the saying, they say, a wise man learns by his own mistakes, but an even wiser man learns by the mistakes of others.

01:04:16.000 I've learned, I've never, you know, I've never picked up again.

01:04:21.000 I've never, you know, since I get clean, but I know that my friends who have picked up, and it's back to what Russell was saying at the beginning is when you've had a period of clean, I've got you, Russell, yeah, there's when you've had a period of abstinence, right, and you pick up, say it's five years or ten years, it's doubly hard to get back because you've got the abstinence violation effect, which means basically that when you violate the abstinence,

01:04:51.000 when you puncture that abstinence, you've obviously got a head full of drugs, you know, you know, a head full of recovery and a belly full of drugs.

01:05:01.000 And, you know, it's really difficult.

01:05:04.000 I think it's really difficult to find the novelty of recovery again.

01:05:09.000 When you've had it the first time and everything's novel and it's fun and it's exciting, if you puncture that and you're trying to get back again, I think it's so and the shame, because at the core of this illness really is shame and self-loathing, isn't it?

01:05:25.000 Really?

01:05:26.000 So my heart goes out to your Lucy's and such like because they, you know, once they've had that and they keep on going in and out, it just reinforces shame.

01:05:38.000 And, you know, and eventually they, you know, often die.

01:05:43.000 Sometimes they don't.

01:05:44.000 Sometimes they get back.

01:05:45.000 But I think that's me now.

01:05:48.000 Thank you, Russell.

01:05:49.000 Done.

01:05:50.000 Well done, Mark.

01:05:51.000 You know, some of the stuff that I identified with was that not being aware of risk and the situations that you confront.

01:06:01.000 But I really was interested in the poetics that we find in our own life when you find yourself back in places where you've been before, when life seems to be making sense from the inside out, that it's not like you're imposing meaning externally, but meaning is being expressed through you, that there's something unavoidable that's being discovered.

01:06:29.000 One of the things that I reckon I'd like to follow up with you, Dave, and you, Joe, before we wrap up is that you came in Christian, Dave, or like it almost seems like a simultaneous conversion.

01:06:43.000 I wonder, first of all, like what you in general felt about like what you identified with, excuse me, in Mark's share there, and what you feel about yourself if you note a kind of a rhythm, a poem, a rhyme being expressed through life, in particular in Mark's story, finding himself at this particular hospital or back in this sort of court and you feel that your life is talking to you.

01:07:07.000 I know that if you're a Christian, that those kind of ideas bear the hue of the presence of Christ.

01:07:17.000 And outside of that, people would still talk about synchronicity and synergy and things.

01:07:20.000 So I just wanted to give you that framing before handing it to you.

01:07:24.000 Yeah.

01:07:25.000 Well, so well, I didn't, I wasn't a Christian when I first got sober.

01:07:31.000 In fact, I was very much running away from God.

01:07:36.000 And everything else.

01:07:39.000 I was forced time in rehab, kicking out windows, spitting on people, trying to start fights with everyone, like was just, wasn't tough, was just lost.

01:07:50.000 And God grabbed a hold of me.

01:07:53.000 Like that was an experience that was not, I made this great decision or I had this, it was God grabbed a hold of me and I got scared.

01:08:03.000 I mean, that it was, it was within one day and it was very dramatic and sudden.

01:08:10.000 And at the same time, as soon as that happened, though, then I'm like, whatever gets me close.

01:08:16.000 Like, I'll do the steps.

01:08:18.000 I'll do counseling stuff.

01:08:20.000 I will, you know, write inventory.

01:08:22.000 I'll journal.

01:08:23.000 I'll pray.

01:08:24.000 Like, you know, it's very black or white.

01:08:28.000 What I suppose I see like in my own recovery is the kind of escalation that I identified in my using, i.e. starting with drink and smoking weed and then recreational drugs, then recreational drugs used obsessively and addictively.

01:08:43.000 And before finally the kind of street drugs that at the time that I was a drug addict defined the nadir of all drug use of crack and heroin.

01:08:51.000 And my recovery is sort of in a sense parroted or paralleled or sort of rhymed with that.

01:08:57.000 And when we were talking about Bill W earlier, I'm struck by the idea.

01:09:02.000 And I sometimes feel this when I'm around people with a lot of recovery.

01:09:05.000 If you get to 20 and 30 years and you're not able to keep it together in a marriage or you're looking at porn the whole time or like, I don't want to, I'm not, I'm trying not to be judgmental, but I must say that I feel like that seems like pretty thin gruel.

01:09:25.000 And I'm very interested because it's obviously what's happened to me about people that have come into recovery as a kind of foundational thing and then recognized that there are other things to experience, like Bill W getting into sort of mysticism and seances and a lot of the kind of what they call it, kind of millennialism, like these sort of ideas that were around that sort of around that time.

01:09:47.000 Or I know that Mark did really into Gujaev and a lot of sort of like sort of men's circle type work and like those kind of like therapeutics that are about reaching deeper psychic states.

01:09:58.000 But you, Joe, like me, I've gotten in, you've like cradle Catholic, but have gotten into recovery.

01:10:04.000 Like even when we were first like doing this together, you and I, we didn't really talk about Jesus so much, did we?

01:10:10.000 So like something that kind of happened sort of near simultaneously for both of us, oddly.

01:10:15.000 I don't even really understand the chronology of it.

01:10:17.000 But do you see some kind of equivalency between deteriorating or escalating drug use and necessary increase of spiritual practice over time?

01:10:30.000 Like as you do this longer, you got to do more, basically.

01:10:34.000 Yeah, most definitely.

01:10:36.000 And for me, like when I first came into recovery, the guy who first sponsored me said to me, look, do you believe in God?

01:10:42.000 I said, yeah, yeah, I believe in God.

01:10:44.000 So I'm Catholic, brought up Catholic.

01:10:46.000 He said, well, no, no, it's not that kind of God.

01:10:48.000 It's not that kind of God.

01:10:49.000 And you've got to say this prayer and that prayer out of the AA Big Book, right? 0.99

01:10:52.000 And like, I thought, who the fuck do you think you are for a start in my head? 0.98

01:10:57.000 Like, it triggered a lot of pride in me. 1.00

01:10:59.000 Fucking piss head telling me how to say prayers. 1.00

01:10:59.000 Do you know what I mean? 1.00

01:11:02.000 It really, it got to me.

01:11:03.000 I understand now what he meant by that.

01:11:05.000 Yeah, it's a sort of, it's the approach used for someone who's against religion and who doesn't believe in God and all that sort of stuff.

01:11:11.000 You'd say to them, do you believe in God?

01:11:13.000 They say no, like, look, it's whatever your conception is of God.

01:11:16.000 It's not religious.

01:11:17.000 It's personal to you.

01:11:18.000 So I understand what he meant by that now.

01:11:21.000 But at the time, I was offended.

01:11:22.000 And it was like sort of like religious pride.

01:11:26.000 Although I weren't a good Catholic, I was far from practicing.

01:11:28.000 But in my head, like every jail sentence I've done, I was really devout.

01:11:31.000 Went to mass every Sunday, done Bible studies and all that.

01:11:34.000 But as soon as I got out, I didn't know anything about the condition, the illness that I suffered from.

01:11:39.000 And I was always going to drink and drug again.

01:11:40.000 And then I become a person that I don't like, couldn't control, and wanted to die.

01:11:46.000 When we met, Russell, when we met in 12-step recovery, I was so broken then.

01:11:52.000 And I realized my relationship with God was wrong.

01:11:56.000 It was always transactional, right?

01:11:57.000 It was always, get me out of this and I'll do that.

01:12:00.000 Or I'll stop doing that if you do this for me.

01:12:02.000 That was how I, that was my prayer.

01:12:04.000 Do you know what I mean?

01:12:05.000 That kind of stuff.

01:12:06.000 And then I'd end on an hour father, a Hail Mary and a glory be, right?

01:12:11.000 When I was really, really, really broken, it was okay.

01:12:14.000 Maybe I don't know nothing.

01:12:16.000 Maybe I don't know anything.

01:12:17.000 And these people here do know.

01:12:19.000 So I'm going to, from that approach, be teachable.

01:12:22.000 Just be teachable and remain completely open.

01:12:25.000 And like, I explored all different avenues of spirituality from like Zen Buddhism to even like went to the Harry Krishna temple and all that kind of stuff.

01:12:35.000 And it was beautiful.

01:12:36.000 It was a beautiful journey.

01:12:38.000 And it kind of come full circle.

01:12:40.000 And around that time, I remember you went to Miami and you prayed a rosary with a fella on a taxi journey.

01:12:46.000 I was saying, and he said, yeah, you keep that one.

01:12:49.000 And there's one for someone else if you know anyone that might want one.

01:12:52.000 And he says, you thought of me, right?

01:12:55.000 A week before that, I'd been in Malaga in Spain visiting a friend of mine.

01:12:58.000 And I ended up just by chance going into church.

01:13:00.000 I hadn't been in church for years.

01:13:03.000 And I had a little prayer up in there.

01:13:05.000 And when I left, I went into the little oratory next to it and I bought a couple of rosaries.

01:13:09.000 So that was a real sign.

01:13:11.000 And previous to that, I experienced what I would call like a second surrender.

01:13:18.000 Like I was trying to fix myself with worldliness still.

01:13:21.000 I had goals.

01:13:22.000 I had plans.

01:13:23.000 And it was them first, them first, right?

01:13:26.000 If I can manage well, if I can do that, everything's going to be all right.

01:13:30.000 And I like what Mark was saying there. 0.94

01:13:33.000 I become suicidal, but in recovery, a daily, daily suicidal ideation, every single day I was tortured, absolutely fucking tortured on a daily basis.

01:13:42.000 And it wasn't until I started praying a rosary and that and going deeper with my faith from a whole new perspective that my life's changed drastically.

01:13:51.000 And here I am now.

01:13:52.000 That's beautifully put, mate.

01:13:54.000 When, like, obviously, this comes from the literature because it's a matter of literal textual fact that when Bill W first encountered someone suggesting abstinence to him, he was expressly told, why don't you choose your own conception of God?

01:14:12.000 Now, in it curious that this brilliant man who undoubtedly sort of opened the gateway, set the channel, had the white light experience, created this, you know, he's the sort of the prophet, if you want, you know, and I do, of AA, that has sort of left this kind of conundrum because there's a when you choose a God of your conception, there's something important to unpack there.

01:14:38.000 One is, even if we're all going to the same church, we're, of course, in a way, choosing a God of our own conception.

01:14:44.000 Like, you know, Emmett Fox would say, you know, obey these attributes of God, love, life, principle, truth, you know, that they are of spirit, soul, like that there are that you can't just go, I think God's this or that, right?

01:14:58.000 Or if you do do that, that God is likely to be a reflection of you, both consciously and unconsciously.

01:15:03.000 And that unconscious aspect of it may very well destroy you at some point.

01:15:07.000 So I wonder how we sit in that kind of paradox of knowing.

01:15:12.000 I first encountered this, as a matter of fact, or a sort of potential comfort in it, when I see Ben Shapiro, like he was addressing Congress or not Congress, just one of them earrings that you have sometimes.

01:15:24.000 And they goes to him, like, well, do you, is it true that you're against homosexual marriage?

01:15:29.000 And he goes, am I as an Orthodox Jew against gay marriage?

01:15:33.000 Yes, yes, I am.

01:15:34.000 Yes, that's actually in the Bible for me.

01:15:36.000 So, yes.

01:15:37.000 And I sort of liked that I like, I'm, what do I believe?

01:15:43.000 I believe what it says in here.

01:15:44.000 That's me.

01:15:45.000 I'm done.

01:15:46.000 Right.

01:15:47.000 So the ways that we communicate about that and express it and riff on it, you know, there's latitude and room in so much as the book tells you many times that whatever it is you think God is, you ain't got it.

01:15:58.000 Use quantum physics.

01:16:00.000 If you think you've understood it, you really ain't understood it.

01:16:02.000 But it does come down to a spiritual, a program of spiritual action.

01:16:06.000 Like that if you're not putting other people first, you ain't landed on the sort of fundamental Christian message.

01:16:14.000 And I suppose like because I'm evangelized, I'm still sort of recalling a thing I heard from an old timer early on in my abstinence journey going like Jesus Christ has took out more men than Jim Beam.

01:16:26.000 I've never forgot that.

01:16:28.000 And like, but like also this sort of sense that I get from a lot of elders in that, there's there's two types of elders, I think, in 12-step fellowships.

01:16:37.000 There's them ones that you feel like are, I mean, it talks about elder statesmen and bleeding deacons in the literature.

01:16:43.000 There's ones where you think, oh my God, you've really run with this.

01:16:47.000 And those people sort of say stuff to me like, it takes you 20 years to even know what this is, to even get what it's talking about.

01:16:55.000 Now, I know there are, you know, someone like Joe's, I would say, going pretty fast.

01:16:58.000 Certainly seems to understand everything I understand.

01:17:01.000 But like, there's people that really seem to be on a, to recognize that you are not giving up alcohol or drugs.

01:17:10.000 You are giving up the person that's addicted to alcohol and drugs.

01:17:13.000 And like you, Mark, sometimes I feel like I've not changed at all.

01:17:16.000 I'm the same as like the little boy in Essex, nervous little mummy's boy and the wreck of a drug addict and all of that stuff. 0.87

01:17:21.000 But like in other ways, like I've sort of been hollowed out and the change is happening so sort of radical and there's been so many layers to it.

01:17:28.000 I do, I wonder if because this whole program, the 12-step program, irrefutable work of inspired genius that it is, by its nature is sort of somewhat protein.

01:17:42.000 I know you still have to do the same stuff, but I suppose it does say in there, go read religious books, go live a religious life, tells you to do that.

01:17:49.000 But if you don't, so therefore, if you don't do that, is it possible that you're not fully experiencing the program?

01:17:57.000 But we've got to wrap up pretty soon, Mark.

01:17:58.000 So go on, we'll just hear from everyone on that and then we'll wrap up.

01:18:02.000 Okay, Mark.

01:18:03.000 Okay, well, basically, yeah, I think there has to be, for me, there has to be a spiritual element.

01:18:09.000 There has to be like, I have to have a connection with something bigger than myself, whatever that got, whether that's, I mean, you talked about that, like, I've done Buddhism, I've done the Gurjev, I've done various other sort of spiritual practices,

01:18:25.000 but that is, that's a necessity for me because therefore, that's the, that's the thing that reduces my ego because my ego really is what we're talking about here is my ego really is the problem and I need that ego to be directed with a spiritual program.

01:18:45.000 I need it to be like, as we say a lot of times, right-sized.

01:18:49.000 And I think we get to the point of we exhaust every avenue to get fulfilled, you know, like everything and materially, whether it's sex, whether it's expand or kudos or money, you know, all of it doesn't work.

01:19:07.000 And we're left and we see it time and time again, people with long-term recovery committing suicide.

01:19:13.000 Why did you think, why did they commit suicide?

01:19:15.000 They're multi-multi-millionaires.

01:19:18.000 But yet they've killed herself and I think that is because they hit a point in their recovery.

01:19:25.000 They've exhausted every avenue and they're left with theirself at the core and they're deeply lonely and I think that's why we need that connection with something bigger than ourselves, greater than ourselves.

01:19:39.000 Go on Joe, and then Dave will take us home.

01:19:42.000 Yeah, I think.

01:19:43.000 Um, what's the question specific?

01:19:45.000 I mean the necessity of connection with god, or just, don't you keep leveling up?

01:19:50.000 If you don't keep leveling up spiritually, you'll end up killing yourself anyway.

01:19:54.000 Yeah 100, because it's look, if you're not moving in the direction of god's will for you, what direction are you moving in?

01:20:00.000 The illness starts to gain ground again, it'll gain momentum in other areas when it and you're going to start looking for external solutions and, like we've all experienced, they don't work.

01:20:10.000 And on the other side of that is always complete despair.

01:20:14.000 And for me, like I was a serial relapser man, I relapsed for for about a year and a half and like, had I conceded, i'm pretty sure I had still right.

01:20:24.000 I feel like I had.

01:20:25.000 I knew all right.

01:20:26.000 I'm an alcoholic.

01:20:27.000 If I drink, I don't know what's going to happen.

01:20:29.000 I don't know what's going to happen.

01:20:31.000 Evidence is in third strike, lifed off potentially, like I don't know where this will go. 0.99

01:20:35.000 But my thinking was, fuck it, I don't care. 0.99

01:20:37.000 Anyway, I don't care. 1.00

01:20:39.000 Let's take the chance and see what happens.

01:20:41.000 Maybe on some level I thought there was some solution there.

01:20:44.000 Still maybe I don't know.

01:20:45.000 But the only ways to go deeper your connection with god, I believe although I know we'll talk about it on another show at some time the the letter from Carl Jung to Bill Wilson.

01:20:56.000 Yeah right, he does say in that okay.

01:20:59.000 He says look, it's a a first of the spirit.

01:21:02.000 You're craving union with god, although it has been shown that if members of a group, part of a group, a unit, you can gain strength there.

01:21:12.000 So a group being a power bigger than you.

01:21:14.000 But I mean, the trouble is, I think, with that you know you need to be attached to that group all the time.

01:21:20.000 What about when you're off on your own?

01:21:21.000 You know it says something in the literature about an Eskimo being out in the North Pole or something like, and then someone turns up with a bottle of scotch and ruins everything.

01:21:30.000 You know like I think of that story.

01:21:33.000 What do you think, Dave?

01:21:35.000 I agree with Joe.

01:21:36.000 It's the with the 12-step promises that you can go anywhere on this earth.

01:21:40.000 I do think that, for for myself the, the steps, are foundational, like that, in some ways you, I never, I never graduate that right like it's always anchoring, anchoring me back to the, it's like it's.

01:22:00.000 A good analogy Would be jiu-jitsu.

01:22:02.000 I mean, there's principles that are foundational, right?

01:22:05.000 And I, but I do think if you're practicing the steps daily, that you're, you're not going to, you can't not level up and continue to grow if you're looking at things because it's getting me straight and then I'm able to look at things through a spiritual perspective.

01:22:21.000 So like I'm going to want that.

01:22:23.000 There's no guy that, in my experience, every guy that really works the steps ends up getting plugged into more spiritual stuff.

01:22:32.000 And almost always it's relationship with the Lord.

01:22:36.000 Yeah.

01:22:36.000 They're seeking it.

01:22:38.000 Come to Jesus, Mark, you stinking heathen. 0.99

01:22:42.000 Praise the Lord. 0.98

01:22:43.000 Thanks so much, Mark.

01:22:44.000 That was beautifully rendered, as always.

01:22:44.000 Thanks for joining us.

01:22:47.000 Mark, where can people find you?

01:22:49.000 Should they? 1.00

01:22:50.000 You're probably the sort of person that likes getting followed, you vain, narcissistic egomaniac. 0.98

01:22:54.000 Just put in Mark Demisla counseling or just put in my books. 0.98

01:22:58.000 Nothing to declare.

01:22:59.000 Like, I've got the books and I've got, like, just online, Mark Demisla Counseling or nothing to declare on Amazon or whatever.

01:23:08.000 Nice.

01:23:09.000 And you can get me there, right?

01:23:11.000 And bear in mind, Mark, when it happens, most of the attacks are bots.

01:23:15.000 So don't take that too seriously.

01:23:17.000 I know.

01:23:18.000 No.

01:23:19.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:23:19.000 Don't worry.

01:23:20.000 God bless you.

01:23:21.000 Okay, guys, coming on, mate.

01:23:24.000 No, it's lovely to see you.

01:23:24.000 You're brilliant as always.

01:23:27.000 What, mate?

01:23:30.000 I'll give you a bell.

01:23:31.000 I'll give you a bell.

01:23:34.000 I'll ring you tomorrow.

01:23:36.000 Don't try and do it in the clock.

01:23:37.000 Don't try and charge me.

01:23:43.000 Okay, Dave, see you later.

01:23:45.000 See you later, Joel.

01:23:46.000 Yeah, see you.

01:23:47.000 Good to meet you. 1.00

01:23:48.000 What a lunatic. 1.00

01:23:49.000 See, I love you. 1.00

01:23:50.000 Bye-bye, mate.

01:23:51.000 Take it easy. 0.93

01:23:51.000 See, he's one of them drug addicts that actually did it. 0.93

01:23:53.000 Dave's another one, became a counselor.

01:23:55.000 Mark became a counselor.

01:23:57.000 Joe, I think, Joe, I think the Lord's got a different plan for you, mate.

01:24:00.000 Who knows what it will be?

01:24:01.000 Who knows what it will be?

01:24:03.000 We'll see.

01:24:04.000 Time will tell.

01:24:05.000 I'd like to see you in one of them friars things, all done up, but with some sort of weird...

01:24:10.000 A Jedi, basically, is one thing I'm describing. 0.94

01:24:12.000 Bundock Saints 2, Joe.

01:24:15.000 Saints, what is that?

01:24:17.000 You won't watch it.

01:24:18.000 Yes, sir.

01:24:19.000 It's good.

01:24:20.000 All right, well, that was Mark Dempster.

01:24:22.000 Thanks for joining me, as always, for Crack On with Joe, Dave, and Russell.

01:24:28.000 I think that's what we're calling it.

01:24:29.000 We've got to create some assets for this thing.

01:24:31.000 I think it's getting better and better.

01:24:32.000 Thanks very much for joining us.

01:24:34.000 We'll be back on Friday.

01:24:37.000 Not with more of the same, but with more of the different.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - January 28, 2026

UK in Freefall as Keir Starmer Opens the Door to 15-Minute Cities — SF675

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