Russell Brand

Brand has many victims.

There are the individual women. Those who have come forward, those who may still, and those for whom the barriers remain too great. I cannot stop thinking about all of them. But it’s not just individuals that he has harmed. It is all women, girls and gender minorities who have been made unsafe by the toxic misogynist narratives he propagated. He’s harmed fragile young men, too, shaping their understanding of masculinity, intimacy and power, and warping them into his own image,  And even as he is subjected to justice, endemic misogyny doubles down on the harm as people bend over backwards to claim Brand's innocence and cast the victims as perpetrators. It's frankly horrific.

But there is yet another group of harmed people that don’t, so far, seem to have been much discussed, and that is the Recovery Community.

The harm done here is complex, far-reaching and, in some respects, particularly insidious.

Brand leveraged his recovery status to enhance his fame.

He did, for a time, court genuine respect among those that argue, for good reason, that greater recovery visibility is a cultural and clinical necessity. Although I didn’t meet Brand personally, I saw him at quite a few national events 10-15 years ago. People were grateful for the profile afforded by his presence, and he was, on the whole, perceived as having both an authentic recovery and something substantial to offer to the recovery movement. People often remarked, just as someone reportedly did at his trial, that he genuinely seemed to care about people seeking recovery.

But all was not well.

Recovery from addiction is, among other things, about second-chances. Brand's public narrative seemed to embody that possibility on an extraordinary, super-charged scale. The more horrific his transgressions, the more inspiring his apparent transformation appeared. The damage he’d perpetrated was extreme by anyone’s standards. By comparison, his new life appeared to be pristine. He was no-longer causing harm (so it seemed to those of us who didn't look too closely), and what’s more, he appeared to be free of the toxic shame that keeps addiction going. This charismatic narrative is incredibly powerful for those of us with addiction histories who struggle to live with the harm we’ve perpetrated. The recovery that Brand had (or appeared to have) looked incredibly attractive, especially perhaps to young men. Freedom from addiction, freedom from shame, the respect of the tabloid-reading public, and a life of choice, freedom and maverick individuality. Amplified by his fame, this offering drew people with addiction histories in their droves to his content, resulting in a cult-like following. His pronouncements on all sorts of topics, including those related to recovery, those arguably adjacent to recovery yet somehow distorted, and those a million country miles from recovery, became their own kind of recovery gospel. Because he was at once one of the most famous men in the world, and ‘one of us’, everything he said, no matter how warped, came with authority and an aura of recovery wisdom.

This is how charisma works.

But there were warning signs that should have troubled the recovery community more than they did.

Brand’s own breaking of his Twelve Step Anonymity could have been the first red flag in this arena. The Twelve Step tradition does not require people to conceal their recovery, but its principle of fellowship anonymity at the level of public media exists for good reasons, not least to protect specific recovery groups from becoming identified with the fortunes and failings of individual personalities. At its heart is the practice humility, perhaps not a virtue we can easily associate with Brand. Celebrities frequently break their own anonymity, and their motives can be murky. Brand gathered a ready-made following of millions by doing so.

Another red flag could have been the easy equivalence he made between addiction to alcohol or class-A narcotics and ‘addiction’ to an unsatisfying job or relationship. There is a genuine discussion to be had about behavioural addictions, cross-addictions and early problem recognition, but this is not it. Brand’s strategic expansion of the circle of addiction was simply a clever way to increase his reach into the lives of people who suffer with the ordinary human condition; in other words, everyone.

Then came his anti-vaxx views. As Covid-19 fatally ripped through communities of people who use drugs, those whose health resilience was already badly compromised, and as it incubated in residential rehabs where vulnerable people lived in close proximity, so too did Brand’s toxic conspiracy peddling. The people who needed protection and immunisation more than most became amongst the least likely to take it up. Brand’s views as a recovery authority were quoted often by those refusing vaccination.

Then there was the notion forwarded in his 2018 book Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions, that suffering is an illusion. This idea has been imported into some sections of wider recovery discourse, via an uninformed co-option of Asian non-dualist teachings that serve to ‘spiritualise’ and thereby, for some, ‘legitimise’ a recovery journey. There is an enormous difference between recognising that our relationship to suffering can change and suggesting that suffering itself is unreal. The power of the notion for Brand is plain to see. If ‘my’ suffering is an illusion, then so is yours.

Annihilating the very possibility of others’ suffering is clearly a very handy item in the perpetrator of cruelty’s toolbox.

Recovery is not, as it is spun by Brand, the experience of personal redemption. It is a practice of profound and painful accountability. It requires a proper confrontation with the reality of harm, including harm that cannot be undone or made right. What he stands for is a terrible inversion of recovery's ethical foundations; a ‘spiritual bypass’ of the first order.

Russell Brand does not represent the recovery community. No-one does. But people who already face stigma because of their addiction histories will, as a result of his association with the community, find themselves once again confronted by the suspicion that recovery is merely a performance, that real change is impossible, and that the language of transformation is simply a convenient disguise for continuing cruelty. In this way, he has undermined the credibility of a community that has worked tirelessly to challenge stigma and demonstrate that recovery is real.

He has damaged the recovery community in the eyes of the world. He has also infected it with his distorted, dangerous ideas, alt-right toxicity and rape-culture.

As we reflect on all of this as a community, we must think much harder about the balance of visibility and anonymity. We must consider carefully the role of charisma and celebrity, if there should be one at all. We must be aware of how vulnerable to malign interference recovery discourse is, and work harder and more proactively to keep it safe. We must examine what happens when inflated stories of personal redemption dominate and eclipse the commitments to accountability, humility, honesty and anonymity, upon which recovery depends.

Russell Brand has caused me to reflect on my own public profile (such as it is!) as a person in recovery. I must never assume that visibility or publicity is an unalloyed good. I must continually question my motives, remain vigilant and resist leveraging my recovery for my own gain.

Furthermore, the Brand case is a reminder of how important it is in our recovery groups to increase our attention to the ways misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and racism can take root. We must be prepared to challenge them explicitly, rather than allowing them to pass by in the name of fellowship, tolerance or good humour. Being conflict-averse, I find this hard personally, but I must do better. We could not have been given a clearer message about what is at stake.

This includes responding compassionately, but firmly, to those who believe Brand has been wronged. We can acknowledge the experiences, vulnerabilities and grievances they have that may have rendered his 'teachings' especially appealing to his defenders, while at the same time vigorously challenging the prejudices they perpetuate. We can all play a part in helping each other to recognise how easy it is to become captive to misogynistic narratives that ultimately diminish our own humanity, damage our relationships, compromise our recovery and contribute to a wider culture of severe harm.