This is a film about drugs, about taking drugs and getting off drugs. Nowadays, I don't drink or take drugs. I want you to give a big, amazing UK round of applause to Mr. Russell Brand! A little bit cool, a little bit of a twit, and I sort of think I'm Jesus. Ten years ago though, I couldn't get enough of them.
Cannabis, booze, acid, speed, coke, crack, smack, that's heroin. I took drugs every single day. I started being afraid of the fact that you could die.
I remember you saying in six months time you were going to be dead in prison or in a lunatic asylum. I remember hearing that and thinking, fucking hell, that sounds heavy. It's heartbreaking as a mum when you've brought an innocent, beautiful little child into the world to see that happen.
I got clean at the age of 27. The age Amy Winehouse was when she died. Amy's death was a paradoxical, unsurprising shock. I felt like I could have done something to help, to give her the chance I am.
That's why I made this film, to have a sympathetic look at alcoholism and addiction, a condition that the World Health Organisation regards as a disorder. Without a program, any of us are toxic individuals to be around, isn't it? For our family, for society at large, for ourselves. I reckon that drugs and alcoholism are much misunderstood in our country by users, non-users and the government.
We need to start regarding addiction in all its forms as a health issue as opposed to a judicial and criminal issue. In this film, I want to learn more and see if we could do things differently. It doesn't make no difference to me. The money, the fame, the power, the sex, the women.
None of it. I'd rather be a drug addict. If I didn't have my program, I'd be a drug addict today.
I loved her on the basis of I thought she was really, really brilliant and that I recognised, oh, this person's got it, this person's got the thing. She's not happy, she's out on edge, this person. She drank a glass of champagne, then threw it over her shoulder. And I went, fucking hell, mate, what are you doing that for? She went, no, no, I did it to impress you.
And I went, whoa, don't. And then she was sort of smoking fags and flicking. flicking them still lit around this room. I got the sense of a ticking clock then and spoke to a few other people about, like, hey, there's a need to do something.
We only said goodbye with words I've died a hundred times Everyone said they saw it coming but hoped it would never happen. Amy Winehouse, who'd publicly struggled with drink and drug addiction for years, was found dead at her home in Camden this afternoon. 100 times, you go back to her, yeah That sense that I had with Amy, that feeling of, oh, I knew that was going to happen, you know, and I just suppose for some reason, because of this flickering sense I had while Amy was alive, that I should be doing something about that. So that's where Amy lived then Mitch. And died in that top left hand room.
These are some of the tributes that are left as you can see though. I don't approve of writing on trees but you can see that they've really made this into a shrine. I mean in the last six weeks of her life, five and a half weeks were sober and then finally the last two days where she drank an awful lot so things were moving in the right direction but you know not fast enough obviously.
When we go to rehab, I said no, no, no. Wrongly, she didn't feel that rehab was for her, which is obviously... She made that fucking clear, didn't she? Yeah.
From 2008 December, she was clear of drugs. But of course, what happened, she didn't deal with the underlying addiction problem, and then... Finally it was the alcohol. Shall we have a quick look at Amy Winehouse singing her heart out? Let's say hello to her.
Amy, you alright love? I think our hair war was finished. Yeah, let's forget, let's have hair peace between you and me now.
Let the war be over. You ain't pissed are you love? Not yet. That's why I feel guilty, isn't it?
Because I am an alcoholic junkie that got clean, and I didn't do, you know, I wasn't able to do anything. You feel guilty because of that? A bit. It's about Amy. She had the power in her.
her hands to stop drinking. She was moving in that direction, but what she was doing was dangerous. It's her responsibility, nobody else's.
We've got to get this message across that having an addiction is an illness. It needs to be treated just like any other illness. And until we adopt that attitude in this country, we're not going to get anywhere. Whatever anyone could have done for Amy, now one thing is for sure, no one can do anything.
She's dead. But there's probably millions of other people suffering on the same path. Loads of people that are going to die if they don't stop taking drugs and drinking.
When it ain't necessary, it's difficult for the individual, it's difficult for the family, it's detrimental for society and it's completely unnecessary because there is a solution. We met and we were like, oh we're gonna change the world, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that, we're gonna have a TV show, wow! And within a year, we had a TV show.
So what if I do a brief dance for some broccoli? Me and Martino had a half-assed hair brain production company back when I was a junkie. This poor sod suffered horribly as my alcoholism and addiction accelerated my loopy behaviour. Complete nudity has got to be worth, I'm thinking, a cauliflower, because I've got tumorous testes and they resemble a cauliflower.
Wow! Everything we wanted! We did it! And we were like, what, 25? And then suddenly, things didn't work anymore, and the ideas didn't come anymore.
You were just gone all the time, taking drugs. I found this. I went to my grandma's house where I'd hidden it away just because it was one of those things that I just never wanted to see again.
Remember that, Fenn? What a little junkie. This is the thing where I know it's a disease. Whenever I see it, it doesn't matter that I was sat there in that flat in Hackney and now I'm in the Savoy Hotel.
I'm jealous of me then! We were just completely lost. And we started being afraid of the fact that you could die.
I remember being eight o'clock in the morning, I remember drinking a bottle of gin. That morning you woke up and you're like, I've got to drink this, I've got to drink... I think this had exploded everybody's life in one moment.
They sacked you as a result of that. And I know you lost your flat where you lived in Bethnal Green because you couldn't afford to pay for it anymore. And those consequences of my actions, you know, of which, you know, there's sort of so many. So many, like just people, you know, like sort of what my mum would have gone through. You know, loads have put my friends all through sort of so much.
You've got no bridge to dealing with those kind of problems because the only problem you can contend with is I can't cope with being alive unless I have drugs, so what am I going to do? It's a greedy disease. It will take everything. First it will take your money, then it will take your friends, then it will take your family, your car, your house. Then it's going to take bits of your body.
And I used to be in there and be scoring with people. that had eyes missing and limbs missing. Just take it until it takes your life.
It'll take everything until it's the last thing left and you'll gladly give it that rather than give up the drugs. I'm a recovering drug addict and know that drug addiction is an illness, it's a disease. He says he's not responsible for his own drug taking.
People do it because they want to. It comes from rich, western kids, selfishly following their pleasures. Russell Brand, I think you've been called a selfish kid there. He certainly is.
Are you responsible for your actions or are you not? Do you take drugs because you have to or because you want to? People, of course, are responsible for their actions. You're responsible for writing for a bigoted newspaper.
Finish it, Russell Brand. I understand people who don't regard it as a disease, even people like Peter Hitchens, because drug addicts are extremely annoying people to be around. They're selfish, impatient, egotistical, self-destructive, demanding, total pains in the arse. Here I am with one now, my mate Paul.
I use many, many different drugs, different substances, you know. What like? Cannabis, amphetamine, speed, cocaine, LSD, ecstasy, crack cocaine, heroin, Valium. What did you do at the weekend? I'm a trip to lean, you know, painkillers, prescribed, unprescribed, legal, illegal.
Oh, I'll get the picture, I'm sorry I asked. More. When did you... He now spends a lot of his time helping other addicts. So I asked him to take me to meet Nathan, a young lad suffering from the disease.
Why are you spending time with this Nathan character? He's 23, which is pretty young. He's an example of how addiction runs right in his family.
Give me a cuddle before we start so we're on the right track. Nathan. I've been in care since I was three.
I grew up with my auntie. Didn't have my own mum and dad in my life. Right.
And, well, they both OD'd and heroin. So, fucking, yeah, that... That's heavy. Yeah, it is, mate.
Yeah, definitely. It's been a big burden on my life, I think, about every day of my life, to be honest. Do you?
Yeah, definitely. I probably moved on average every three months while I was in care, and that happened for about two years. I'd say I think I moved, I think it was like, something like 23 times I've counted over a three-year period. No stability. You weren't taking drugs?
No, I wasn't taking drugs. Because it was fun or something? What it was more about for me was taking drugs because it was basically... I didn't have a family, did I? I was on my own.
And the drug was there for me. That drug was there for me when I was down. That drug was there for me when I had no food in my kitchen. That drug was there for me when I had nothing to wash my clothes with. So, you know, if I was depressed, I'd do some drugs.
If I was ill, I'd do some drugs. If I had no-one to speak to... I'd do some drugs. It was there for me for everything, Russell.
We all have different stories, don't we? But all of us, everyone you talk to will say there's a sense of sadness inside, a thing that you're trying to fill up with drugs, eh? Yeah, it's always there.
You'll never get rid of it by doing drugs. It might work for the start, but that feeling inside, I still have it now, to be honest, Russell, mate. Is there something Nathan and I have in common that explains why we both became addicts?
Is it an illness? Or are me and Nathan and homeless junkies just a bunch of spoiled selfish millionaires? You're called Professor David Nutt. That's my name. That's an amazing name.
Yeah, well, what else could I be other than a psychiatrist? Brain scientist. I don't think other than a character in Cluedo. Professor Nutt in the lab with a brain scanner. That's a good one.
To get some professional and expert insight, I visited the man I call the Nutty Professor. He used to be a government drug czar, a bloody stupid term. He researched his addiction here at Imperial College London.
study ever done on addiction. How? Because what we're doing is we're taking people with addictions to alcohol or heroin or cocaine and we're scanning them in that scanner to understand what's different about their brain compared with other people. Say like Peter Hitchens the journalist and a lot of people I think believe that addiction is a thing that people just sort of do.
People just take drugs for a lot. laugh because they're weak. And obviously I don't think that, but is there neurological or at least psychiatric evidence that addiction is a legitimate condition? Unquestionably, addiction has got something to do with the brain.
Most people take drugs. Almost everyone in this country drinks alcohol at some point in their life, but only 10% get addicted. And that 10% are different, and they're different because their brain is different. Our experience tells us the addiction occurs...
usually through one of three things. One is that people get stressed. When you're stressed, you activate parts of your brain.
I've just shown it up here, this part of the brain here, which we call the amygdala. The amygdala reacts to stress. Exactly, and in some people it reacts excessively to stress. And we know that drugs like alcohol can dampen that down.
And so many people become dependent on alcohol because they use it to reduce stress. The second is that people get pleasure. They start to do something which is enjoyable, and then they start to take the drug. to reinforce that.
That comes from another part of the brain. That comes from this part of the brain here. It's an area of the brain which has a lot of the transmitter called dopamine. Dopamine gets you going in the mornings.
If dopamine's not working, then you're stiff and flat. And the third is that some people are just very impulsive. Impulsivity is actually a very straightforward behavior, which we can model in animals, for instance.
And it turns out that when you have a very impulsive rat, it has alterations in the dopamine system. What you do is you tell them that when a light comes on, they will get a reward if they put a lever on. Light goes on, five second wait, food.
The impulsive rat can't wait for five seconds. They just go, fucking hell, where's my reward? Exactly.
It's been three seconds. seconds. There you go. And you can find that about 10% of rats are very impulsive. And those rats are interesting because they like cocaine.
You give them cocaine, they take a lot more than the other rats because they have a deficiency of dopamine. They have The inherent deficiency of dopamine which this cocaine redresses. Exactly.
So it fits exactly with the human situation. Well, the thing is, when you said that thing, it made me laugh out of identification. I remember from just when I was a kid, if someone goes like, look, you've just got to wait a little while, Russell.
I'd be like, no way! It was inconceivable to me to do that. Like a pain, like a roaring existential pain that I would not tolerate. And it's that rat-like reaction to drugs that makes me one of the 10% of the population that cannot use them recreationally.
Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth. After 11 years of using drugs, my life was in chaos. I was broke, in debt and unemployable.
Cigarette. Fortunately, I met John Knoll, who physically forced me to go to rehab. There he is, look. I'm tired of him in a bad mood. He kept chucking that ball against my office wall, and I thought, he's going to be a real annoying fucker to work with.
Yeah? But he's good. And you were wrong about the first thing, but you were right about the second.
And I guess it was your Christmas party, and I was using gear in the toilet, and I was over the foil and everything. What's that, mate? Oh, fucking hell, is that heroin? You've got a bit of a problem, haven't you?
Do you know what I mean? You've got a bit of a roundabout. Yeah, because I've got...
I couldn't stop. I knew I couldn't stop. I didn't want to stop, really. Then we ganged up on you, didn't we? You didn't then have a choice.
I remember this is the very chair, actually, that I was sat in. And, like, you know, getting that information. You're a drug addict.
It's serious for you. And if you don't stop now, in six months' time, you're going to be dead, in prison or in a lunatic asylum. Do you want to come to treatment?
I went, no way. And you went, fuck that, you're going. That was it! That was the decision made!
You didn't really have much of a choice. There weren't many options for you. Except getting on the train to Bury St Edmunds. Focus 12 is a charity rehab. I first entered this building in December 2002 on Friday the 13th.
Ooh spooky. Chip Summers, the man who runs it, told me the whole treatment process would take seven weeks. That was a lie.
It actually took 12. During these three months of hell, they tricked me into not using or drinking one day at a time. I have your photograph from a mission. You can see quite clearly that you're studying. This is a person on drugs.
Yes. And, dare I say it, gorgeous. No, I think you look rather gaunt and haggard, actually. I do look really wild.
You've got very hooded eyes. Arrived, confused, vulnerable, erratic, found it hard to stick to a timetable. Still happening.
You had gone into a life of dependency, and if you'd carried on like that, the end result of that lifestyle is really an absolutely shit existence. Although Chip may look like a responsible bureaucrat now, he is in fact a junkie. He was a heroin addict for 18 years, always in and out of prison, homeless for seven years, and three times ended up on a life support machine.
I think there's a real attitude that you got yourself into this, you know, it's your choice, you got yourself into it, pay the price. Actually, there's not a single person who walks through that door who's set out to be destroyed the way they are, to become addicted and dependent. But whatever sort of joking around that you did, there was within you a real drive, you wanted to get better. This is the group where you come in in the morning and have to write your daily diary. There's a rota and stuff, like people have to do jobs and contribute.
And that's what a lot of it is, I think it's learning again to behave socially and responsibly. I hated it. I hated having to be like, right, you've got to do this cleaning or something like that. But it's really good for you to learn them basic things. This garden's a lot better than when I was here as well.
Drug addicts here, don't film them. Don't want their anonymity compromised. But a glance tells you we're talking about scum of the earth. It's weird because you know they only want to help you. But like you still sort of see them as adversaries.
Because really all you want to do is drink and take drugs. The last thing you want to do is like go after them. I feel lonely and sad and I don't know how to talk to people and I'm angry and hurt and all they want to do is talk about that stuff the whole time.
They're bringing that up consistently. So it's like someone's prodding you in the most painful place because you have to learn to deal with that stuff because if you don't learn how to deal with that stuff the only other solution is to drink and take drugs. That's the only solution. This is the arse end of the mollycoddling.
Things like art therapy. Oh yeah, they still do art therapy here. They say to you, give examples of how drug addiction and alcoholism and behaviour has hurt other people. And you sort of go, no, probably never.
And then you go, oh no, my mum! I learned the impact of my addiction on myself, the impact of my addiction on the people that I love, and the likely consequences of my continual using. I understood that for the first time. This very spot was where I sat when I like after 12 weeks like I would graduated terrified of leaving of going back to London so grateful and happy and overwhelmed by what because for me like when you're a drug addict the idea of not taking drugs is inconceivable there's like such a profound spiritual change that takes place because you like you start to integrate as a human being all these things that you're not dealing with initially comes to the surface and it's terrifying and unsettling and awful but once you know it's the beginning of a lifelong journey of doing things differently.
Staying clean one day at a time works for me but the problem for addicts in Britain today is that it's a treatment that over 90% of sufferers cannot get access to. There aren't enough rehabilitation places. I don't think abstinence treatment is really regarded very highly. I think it's seen as the kind of end of the road for very extreme cases because the argument is very much that, you know, we have a response to the drug problem.
It's called methadone. Addicts like these at Focus 12 have been prescribed the legal drug methadone for years to take every day as a heroin substitute. About ten years ago it became the government's main method of treating addicts.
What the government hoped was if they gave addicts methadone, they'd stop committing crimes and get money for drugs. And they'd also stop sharing needles and getting HIV. Which is a nice idea.
Also, it's probably cheaper. I was on methadone for 15 years. Bloody hell, mate, that's a long time, isn't it?
It's meant to reduce crime and it's meant to reduce your addiction, but come on, I'm an addict, so I abuse that just as much as you abuse drugs. It's harmful if not more harmful, in my opinion. Why?
Methadone is worse. Why? It's harder to come off.
It's harder to come off. It's more addictive. It gets into you. It rots you away.
It costs whatever. It's like patents. They save it. It costs more money and it's not dealing with the problem.
a place like this what deals with it and deals with us, methadone, you go to a chemist and go, yeah, I'll see you later, and you walk out. What else is that for an addict? Over the last 10 years, the argument has been put forward by the National Treatment Agency that we are being successful.
We are keeping people off the streets. We are maintaining them stably on methadone. What are you going to do with it?
Every single addict that comes along, just park them on methadone. It doesn't understand addiction either. If you're an addict or an alcoholic, you want to get completely stoned.
You want to get completely wrecked. You don't want to be stable. Nobody starts on a piss-up to get stable. They say, ''I am going to get this old fucking stable ''and I'm going to sit here and laugh my life.'' They want to get wrecked. So to give them enough drugs...
You either give them enough drugs to get wrecked, which is just ridiculous, or you don't give them enough and they use on top. So, you know, and why are you colluding with something that is such an incredibly poor life decision? On methadone you've got no chance of an outcome other than somebody still on methadone.
But why should we trust Chip Summers? Remember those pictures of him doing heroin? He runs a rehab and is probably biased.
Let's speak to someone who really believes in methadone-based treatment, a proper doctor who prescribes it. This is the technique that treats 90% of Britain's junkies. Claire Garada is a GP and the chair of the Royal Council of General Practitioners.
She's considered an expert in drug treatment. She describes methadone as the gold standard. I'm assuming this woman's a recovering drug addict who gave her job out of some sort of pity.
Is that how it works? This woman, she's still using intravenous drugs, that's obvious. Well, it's lovely seeing you.
I don't think I've ever had anyone like yourself. You have? I'm a junkie.
It's all you've had in here. I do see a lot of patients with drug users. Do you?
A lot of patients have done over the years. And I know you talk about abstinence. That's absolutely fine, but I think actually keeping... Some patients, the vast majority of mine, who are on methadone, do very, very well.
Methadone's a drug. If you're on methadone, you're on drugs. So for me, it's like just rearranging the furniture on the Titanic.
But can I ask you a question? Yeah. Would you... you say the same thing about someone on insulin for diabetic diabetes or someone on a an anti hypertensive treatment for high for high blood pressure why is it that we pick out a medicine that's used to treat a disease but i also look after folk who have been damaged from the day they left their mother's womb damaged psychologically damaged physically damaged emotionally who end up making no friends who drift into crime at a young age and then drift into drugs now for those patients Actually, they do need to be on something long enough, secure enough, to sort all the rest of the bits out.
They don't have the psychological awareness, they don't have the support in order to do what you've done, which is make an abstinence-based... I completely disagree with you, Doctor. What I really want to be clear about is this is not an attack on... I can't understand you.
Not at the moment. Let me carry on talking. But there's an institutionalised mentality. around the treatment of addiction that is not helpful to addicts because you're not addressing the underlying problem i'm not saying use an individual you're doing a really good job i'm just saying that there needs to be an honest debate an honest exchange of information and that the objective has to be i think from the origin of the truth to get people dependence free so yes methadone is going to be a part of that but like you know you're saying oh they don't have the layers of support why don't they have the layers of support why is there not funding for the layers of support i would love everybody to live drug free lives on nothing you But I've been a GP long enough to know that that's not possible.
A large number of patients still need opiate substitution treatment whilst they sort out all the bits that were missing as they were growing up. And that takes time. It's like putting a plaster around a broken leg. You put that plaster around it so that it can heal underneath.
It's like putting a plaster around a broken soul, is what it's like doing it. I'm not disputing what you're saying. I'm just saying that we have to be more ambitious, more compassionate.
That it's not that we need to... address this problem more quickly and I completely disagree with you. I've seen extraordinary turns of it, people turn their lives around in extraordinary ways and I believe in people, I believe in the possibility of change. As long as people are taking methadone they're not going to address those problems, they're not going to be able to address their problems of origin.
I think that is so... What, the people on methadone cannot address their problems? I think it's so patronising for you as an addict because you're not a drug addict are you? It doesn't make no difference to me. the money, the fame, the power, the sex, the women, none of it.
I'd rather be a drug addict. If I didn't have my programme, I'd be a drug addict. Today, like that, in a second, I'd walk out, I know how to score around here.
Like, I'd do it gladly. And the reason I don't do it is because of the things I'm talking to you about, and I know that with methadone, I'd be using on top. Like, most of the drug addicts I know are.
I'm not being patronising, I'm listening to you on the stuff you know about, but not on the stuff you don't. Which I continue to follow up my patients, I continue to see them, and to say that methadone destroys their soul, or whatever the comment you made, I think... It doesn't give them access to the solution that they require. But it doesn't deter them from the solution that they require.
I think it does. Okay, then we have to agree to disagree. Before I spoke to that GP, I met a junkie in the toilet, drinking booze. Then I saw her again as I came out. This woman is on methadone.
Is it working for her? I see you're drinking some Kestrel there. Yeah, drink every day.
So can you have a drugs? I'm not going to lie, I smoke a bit of crack now and again but I was a heroin user like most of my life. You own a script? Yeah I just would own a script last month.
What's it like? They put me on 80ml but in the last month I've come down to 40. come after them but it's very hard to stay after them. It's really hard to stay stuck. I think you shouldn't have anything at all. Like not methadone, not Subutix, not nothing.
No, no methadone, no nothing. None of this? No, none of this. I wonder if you'd be...
But you know what, the only thing is, like, see if people actually gave you the help after you stopped taking the methadone and stopped doing everything rather than just stop prescribing your methadone and that, except basically don't come and see me anymore. I can't sit in the same company I sit in every day, like, without being drunk or like... I don't get high so much now, not going to lie, maybe if I get a little bit of money I'll buy crack but that's it. For me this argument is at the heart of improving treatment for addicts.
Substituting illegal street drugs with government backed legal drugs like methadone is not moving addicts on. In 12 years I've been to 33 funerals of either My friends or people who've worked for me. Former junkie Mark Johnson campaigns to persuade people that methadone doesn't work.
He uses shocking photographs of addicts who are all using on top of their methadone prescription to make this point. Is this an illness? And I think after seeing an image, you know, show the absolute naked truth of what people do to change how they feel, the extremities that they go. I don't think it can leave you with the same preconceptions. She's pretty brutal, isn't she?
Yeah. And she's got venous drug use in the neck there. Yeah.
That's a 22-year-old, seven months pregnant. Oh, no, that's not good. Had a history of injecting in her groin. Why is this? Because she can't use her veins in her arms?
All her veins are gone, yeah, at 22. Yeah, she's used them since she was 13, so... That's somebody's legs he's been using for about 30 years. Mark wants me to meet two of the women he's been photographing. What are their names, mate?
Suzanne and Karen. Both women struggle with lives dominated by crack and heroin use, as well as the methadone that they've been prescribed for years. When I went to get help, I didn't want to go into... a methadone program. To me it's like they're not using it for what it's used for, it's used to help you get off of heroin.
You understand me? Not to stabilize you for 20 years time you're still taking methadone because you're not ready to come off of it. You will never be ready to come off of it.
I believe in abstinence based recovery myself because it's what's worked for me. I've never tried any type of recovery so I... What's stopping you from going to rehab right now then?
Me, basically. Yeah, that's the only thing. It's stopping me.
It's me. I'd love to come up on methadone and heroin. I hate being on methadone and heroin. I like to smoke crack, I'm not going to lie. That's going to be hard for me to stop.
Well then why don't you stop then? I'm trying to stop. But it's just taken so long, with the funding and the system. I don't think you can have any drugs, either of you.
Because I think that you've both got addictive tendencies and if you take any drugs at all, you won't be able to control it. That's £35 worth, me and Karen bought. I can open it, it doesn't bother me.
That's half of £25 worth. Fucking hell. Me, my...
I think I was probably at my worst doing £100 a day. Is that all? Yeah, I was lucky, you know.
I've not seen this for a while. It's still like, after all these years, after nine and a half years, it makes me feel like I want to cry, like a girlfriend or something. It's not making you edgy though, is it?
It's making me a little bit excited. Yeah? A little bit. You know that you ain't going to go back No I don't know that actually I hate hearing I want to stop that I always think to myself that I'm going to have to kind of be railroaded into it because I know that if I give myself a a chance, I'll talk myself out of it.
There's always a reason to carry on taking drugs. No, not so much that. No, not so much that. I'm saying, like, just responsibilities.
I've got a dog. No, seriously, he came to detox with me the last time. It's not an excuse.
Mate, it is a fucking excuse. Well, no, because I can take him with me, so is that an excuse? I'm just saying that.
He's my main stumbling block. I sat for seven months in the day's programme. Escobar.
Escobar? Esky. What kind of dog is Escobar?
He's a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. He sounds like an arsehole. He's a part staff part demon dog he's my baby he's a sweetie we're making a documentary about karen she's got a very serious dog problem yeah oh she just can't give up the dog one day at a time you ain't got a dog problem you've got a drug problem so like i think let's deal with the drug problem i think the dog problem will take care of itself i'm not you know against the idea i really am not i just yeah i don't know why i haven't done I can't tell you what's the worst that could happen. I come out, I get, you know, all into trouble again.
So I've lost nothing anyway. So I might as well have a go because, just because I might as well. Also, like, don't forget the upside.
The upside is that you have tremendous potential as a human being that you could realise and somewhere in you, you know that and recognise it. And I know that that can be frightening, but this is an opportunity to, with support, start to access that. When could you go?
Oh, fuck off! Wouldn't it be heartening if they went, Karen's now got six months clean and she's got a tentative job, and whilst it isn't always easy, she's making incredible progress. You know, it might be, nah, Karen just didn't fucking show up.
You know, that's like, you know, really, really likely. But like, what I feel, she made me feel very, very hopeful. Hanging out with them two felt like something you remember in such a powerful way.
So it's not like I felt like, oh, I'm going to fuck my life off and live here and do gear with these two. But it's more attractive than you would think. It's more attractive than you would think. Mostly filled with titillation, stimulation, attraction, excitement.
Only now do I think, wow, how lucky I am that I don't have to live my life defined by the acquiring and using of drugs. I believe that people like me with the disease of addiction have to one day at a time abstain from all substances including methadone or prescription drugs. Otherwise we don't have the opportunity to address the internal incentives that are propelling us towards drug and alcohol use.
Conveniently I found an expert who thinks exactly like me. Professor Neil McKegney is a world authority, recently given an award by the World Forum Against Drugs for his research on a better drugs policy for the 21st century. We asked addicts, what do you want to get out of treatment? And predominantly they said, we want to become drug-free. When I started to tell people, that was their answer.
That was regarded as an incredibly unwelcome piece of research. Was it? Nobody in the world of treatment...
wanted to hear that predominantly addicts in treatment wanted to come off the drugs. Why? Because I think that set a challenge to them. Are you helping them to become drug-free?
Or are you just making another drug available to them? When we follow people up, when we ask the question, well, if the majority want to become drug-free, how many actually do become drug-free on the base of the treatment which they were given? How many do?
It was tiny. After only three years of treatment, it was less than, it wasn't even in double figures. So over 90%. 90%? were still dependent on the drugs that they had been dependent on when they'd come forward for treatment, only now we'd added methadone into the mix as well, so they were dependent on an additional drug.
In fact, the number of people who came off drugs after three years' treatment was lower than would have been the case had they had no treatment at all. Oh, it's pointless. It's literally pointless.
That's almost the definition of pointlessness. They might as well have took the money and the methadone and thrown it out of a window. It would have had the same impact. Somebody has got to challenge that orthodoxy that actually says...
It's OK to deliver treatments which we know are not working. Because at the end of the day, who really cares that much anyway? Because they're just drug addicts. I spoke to one of the UK's leading proponents of the methadone programme and he said to me, you know, Neil, if my daughter was a heroin addict, I would do everything and some to get her into a residential rehab. I would not prescribe her with methadone.
And I felt... That's disgraceful. All you're saying then is that the person that you would care about, you'd know what you would get.
The people who you care less for, they get something different. Neil McKegney just reinforced for me the importance of getting an addict into rehab. Since I met Karen, I've stayed in touch with her and talked to her about rehab at Focus 12 with Chip.
According to my lovely mum, some lunatic woman who I happened to live inside for nine months, that was the moment where everything changed for me. You're happy I went in Focus, aren't you, mum? What was it like when I was a drug addict? Well, you're helpless. You want your child to be happy and they're depressed and you look so ill, skinny, not particularly clean, had no pride in your appearance or how you lived.
It's heartbreaking as a mum when you've brought an innocent, beautiful little child into the world to see that happen. Yeah. Oh, don't cry, will you? And on that bombshell... Mum!
Mumma love you! Awwww I'll come round and give you a quick cuddle To make her happy But every time I think about it, it just makes me want to run away and just either use or I don't know, just like, yeah. You can see a really beautiful woman, you know. You've got beautiful hair, you've got lovely features. Yeah, I know.
I can see it. It's a brilliant step and the most important thing is you've decided to take it. Hello, is that Chip?
Yeah, hi, that's him. It is. You all right? I've been told that you're interested in coming into treatment.
Yeah, that is the plan. How long have you been using for? 18 years. Okay.
Yeah. And what's your daily drug use? Methadone 90ml. About a gram of crack and about half a gram of heroin.
Okay, so you're saying... So why do you want to stop? Um, because I've had enough. The drugs don't do anything to me anyway.
The methadone's just a pain in the arse. Myriad other reasons, really. Right. Yeah. There are more reasons to stop than there are to continue.
There aren't any to continue. Apart from that, I'm an idiot. So, yeah. Just relax a little bit.
You know, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah, it could be a train coming along, though. We can see your place.
Okay. We can work it out. We can do it. Lovely. Okay then.
Alright, thanks very much. Nice to speak to you. Bye. That was good.
Scary. Why? Do you feel alright?
Yeah, yeah, I do. Two weeks is bloody quick, but yeah. It is quick, isn't it? I know. One of the strongest arguments for rehab is that it takes the addicts out of the community where their lives are falling apart and gives them a breathing space to reassess and hopefully move on.
Another place you'd think would be ideal to achieve that is Britain's prisons. because there are thousands of addicts locked up inside. Don't sniff me in that suspicious way. I've got nothing to be afraid of. Over 80% of the British prison population are addicts or have substance abuse issues, but only one in ten get any treatment other than methadone to break their habit.
The Mount Prison in Hemel Hempstead, North London, is one place where prisoners get more than methadone. They run an abstinence programme inside. If we don't do anything with them while they're here, we're just going to lock the problem up, if you like, and then release them. the problem and we're just going to create more victims. It's going to be constantly re-offending and they're just going to keep coming back to prison.
So 70 odd percent are going out and they're not re-offending in the first two years. They're getting into recovery. So you're changing people's lives.
and breaking a massive difference. That's what happened to Nick. In and out of prison for crimes committed as a drug addict until he became part of the charity WRAPT, the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust. Yeah, that's right, WRAPT. Good acronym.
That was eight years ago. Now he runs the programme here to help the prisoners. A lot of people on this planet experience obsession.
Loads of people on this planet, no doubt, are waking up, have low self-esteem, don't feel good about themselves, not have a sense of it. attachment, their morals might have gone out the window. But what separates addicts from the rest of the planet is that once they start using, they cannot stop. So how do we address that bit?
Don't use. Okay? That's the easy bit. You cannot get drunk unless you take a drink. You cannot get high unless you inject a drug.
Ain't going to happen. What do you think holds you lot together? Strength or weakness?
Strength. Really? Weakness. Thank Thank you.
It's your ability to be vulnerable, it's your ability to drop all the bravado and reach out and ask for help and be able to communicate when you're feeling scared and lonely. Doing that in a prison setting is really difficult. But for you guys in order to do that you're going to need support from each other. It's probably quite hard to confront some of the things that you have to confront while undergoing the WRAPT programme.
It's helped me to understand why I didn't become an addict at 17. when I suffered a bereavement. I was an addict from when I was two years old. My manipulation started when I was two years old.
My control started when I was three, you know. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. You have to be very honest.
That's not very easy, because it's revealing and painful. Yeah, you know. Something's a bit embarrassing.
I've sat in this room at times and felt like I was sitting here naked. You weren't, though, just to clarify. What goes on? There is a cult.
Only 60 prisoners out of 2,000 in the mount get the chance of treatment like this and yet the success rate of staying clean after they've completed the programme and leave prison is that almost half do stay abstinent. That's really good. The way I see it, there's only two things I can't do in my life from now on. One's have a drink, the other is use a drug. That leaves an infinite amount of possibilities that I can do.
I could live the rest of my life on the breadline. but I'm going to be happy because I'll be living on the bed line, clean and sober. I still struggle every day.
It's all about renewing yourself. I'm going to preach to you, yeah? Ephesians 4.23. Fucking hell. I'm not going to preach, you just quoted me chapter and verse.
Be constantly renewed of your mind, meaning having a fresh and mental spiritual attitude. That's good, isn't it? It's like one day at a time.
And this is what this is about. I wanted it this time. I needed it.
You know, I've got children out there who need me. My mum and dad want their son back. You know, they want their peace of mind back.
That's what I stole from them, their peace of mind. Yeah. I can sit here today and say I'm clean.
I've never been a month clean. Next month, I'm going to be a year clean. Imagine that, after 22 years being a...
Yeah, clean. Yeah, that's incredible. The odds are that when Bernard comes out of prison, he'll stay clean.
Good for him and potential victims. But RAP say they could be offering the same prospect to ten times the number of prisoners at the Mount alone. It seems that the cost of the programme would be more than offset by the reduction in crime.
This evolved thinking pings around in the law enforcing brain of Brighton's Chief of Police. I'm going to see Chief Inspector... Superintendent. Is that better?
Chief Superintendent Graham Bartlett. Chief Superintendent Graham Bartlett. Hello. Hi Russell, how are you? Hello, nice to meet you.
Brighton, until recently, was the drugs death capital of the UK. Try putting that on a mug. The way that we approach it here is that most of our crime that involves people stealing stuff, so burglaries, car crime, robberies... Acquisitive crime. I didn't want to get into too much police jargon, but acquisitive crime is generated by people's need to get money to buy drugs.
I reckon probably about 80% of that. 80% of things that are getting taken criminally is so people can afford drugs. That wasn't always the case, though, was it?
It's escalated. No, when I was here many years ago working as a detective, a lot of the crime was based on professional people committing crime because that's how they made their living. But now it's completely changed and it's all about drugs. The sort of defining moment for me was about 17 years ago.
There was a bloke that I'd known since I was probably two or three, grown up with, lost touch with at about 15, 16. Really close friend of mine. Ended up getting into a party scene, then ended up getting into drugs, then ended up getting into addictive drugs, ended up losing his job because of it, having to steal, and then committing burglaries. He'd been in and out of prison for burglary. This is someone who had a comparable upbringing to you. other than the slurs.
He didn't wake up one morning and think, I'm going to be a drug-addicted burglar. It was an accident that made him do that. And therefore, I thought, well, actually, it could happen to any one of us. Graham Bartlett decided that instead of putting drug-related arrests into police cells and then prison, they'd put them into treatment. Here at a charity called CRI, the Crime Reduction Initiative.
Less good acronym. If what we're trying to do is help people stop using drink, drugs, you need to treat them decently, you need to treat them with respect, you need to treat them as people, you need to help people become part of the community. Because they've come from our community.
The reasons people get into drink and drug use are complicated and it's too easy to say these people are criminals, they're dirty, they're part of the community that we live in. And our approach is... If you're part of our community, we'll work with you to help you become fuller parts of the community. That's a brilliant way of thinking. Al, what's your part in this caper?
I'm a hazard to my community, really, when I'm out there. As soon as I saw you, I thought, hello, here's a hazard to his community, this bloke. How long was your drug addict for? About 35 years. Oh, well, you're committed then.
Yeah, yeah. During that 35-year period, how were you funding your drug use? Clearly, you had a good job in the city.
Okay. I was a street bum for many years and flitted through phases of selling drugs as well, which I thought I was a bit of a gangster. However, I'm not. And, yeah, so I just done damage, really. I sold, I funded other people's habits, other people funded mine.
I'm really good at taking and today I don't. I robbed my family. Robbed your family, that's not good. My family.
Or anyone. Anyone who doesn't get it, I'd rob it. I've done what needs to be done. Drug dealing, violence, stealing from shops, from cheese to clothes.
At his worst, Steve was stealing up to a pound of Red Leicester Day. How do you help each other? I'm, you know, a whole bundle of feelings that some days I don't know what to do with, so I give Steve a ring. So, look, because he understands I've been through treatment with the guy.
You go to Steve to talk about your feelings. I do, indeed. Steve! That's amazing.
I've had a feeling. Oh, yeah? What was your feeling? Amazing. And it works.
It works? This stuff works. You're abstaining from drugs and alcohol.
You've stopped committing crimes? Yeah. Is drug use a health problem or is it a crime problem?
Actually... It spans both, which is all the stuff we've been talking about today. And the treatment works to improve people's health, and that gets you health gains, and also there is a crime reduction dividend to treatment.
Graham Bartlett told me that in the last six years in... And 500 addicts who previously would have gone to prison have instead gone into treatment. Between them they've been convicted of about 21,000 crimes between them. That 500? Fucking hell, they're recidivists!
They absolutely are. They've got about an average of 40 crimes each. And if you apply a cost to that, it's about 27 and a half million quid.
Just those people... That 500? 27 million quid?
Yeah, just those people, just for what they've been convicted of. So you made a massive economic saving taking them out of the game. For every pound spent on treatment, Brian saves three pounds on re-offending.
For the UK, with crimes by drug offenders costing 14 billion a year, the savings from this approach could be enormous. I've got this philosophy that users belong in treatment, dealers belong in prison. If we can understand that addiction is a physiological issue, not necessarily one that is going to be solved by people being locked up in prison, then we can stop them committing the offences that they should be locked up in prison for.
We can do things differently in policing and prisons that save money and lives. Brilliant. This is the message I want to take into Parliament, where I've been asked to give evidence before the Home Affairs Select Committee, which has been investigating how effective drug treatment is in the UK. They've taken evidence from all kinds of experts, and now they want to hear what Chip and me think from inside the problem.
Ex-addicts in recovery. This means I am a type of expert. This is an amazing experience.
What is incredible is that it's nine and a half years ago, you were a mess. And now, you're still a mess. Still a mess, but look how nice I look.
We're in Parliament. They've invited us here. Yeah, we're not broke in here.
No, two junkies have been invited into Parliament. There you go, we're just a couple of junkies. For me, it is vital that more addicts get the relevant information into recovery, change their lives and become drug-free.
Of course Amy's death is tragic, but if we use it as an opportunity to review and reassess the way we treat addicts and addiction and alcoholism in this country, then it hasn't been entirely in vain. So her death is sad, but it might not feel so pointless. Hello. You're a former heroin addict. Yeah.
Briefly, could you tell us how you got onto drugs and then how you managed to come off it? I was, like, sad, lonely, unhappy, detached, and drugs and alcohol for me seem like a solution to that problem. If you have the disease or the illness of addiction or alcoholism, the best way to tackle it is to not use drugs in any form, whether it's state-sponsored opiates like methadone or illegal street drugs or...
or a legal substance like alcohol. We see no distinction between these substances. What we believe in is that abstinence-based recovery is the best solution for people suffering from this condition.
Was that brief enough? Very brief, thank you. You were arrested roughly 12 times. It was rough, yes.
Do you think there needs to be a carrot and a stick? I don't think there needs to be a carrot or a stick. Both of those things seem like... bizarre metaphors.
I think what there needs to be is love and compassion to everybody involved. If people are committing criminal behaviour, then it needs to be dealt with legally, but you need to offer them treatment, not simply out of some airy-fairy-that's-all-old-hands-and-hug liberalism, but because it deals with the problem and it prevents further crimes being committed. Having gone through addiction and then rehabilitation... What is your message to young people who want to get involved in drugs? My message isn't for young people.
My message is for people that have this condition of addiction. If you have the condition of addiction, there is help available for you. We need to start regarding addiction in all its forms as a health issue as opposed to a judicial and criminal issue. We need to change the laws in this country and we need to have a more compassionate, altruistic, loving attitude to the people with the disease of addiction and recognise that these people, with the proper help... Access to the proper treatment can become active and helpful members of society, like myself, some would argue that point.
We need to offer them treatment and activate them and incorporate them into our society. So the message is ultimately one of pragmatism, altruism and compassion in all areas of the condition. Karen has followed through on the chance of going into rehab.
She's just been assessed at Focus 12. I've had the assessment. What am I using? How much methadone am I on? When I spoke to them, they said they were concerned because the amount of methadone you'll have to go on to compensate for when you're not using illegal drugs anymore would be really high, and they're saying it'll take about three months to reduce you.
Well, what they... I was reducing down by 10 mils a week up until last week. How was that?
Did you notice it? Yeah, I did, yeah. Really?
I spent a couple of days crying, then another one, one in a fight, everyone. I think that just shows the direct relationship between taking drugs and not feeling emotions, and not taking drugs and feeling emotions, and therefore the obligation. And that is why people take drugs, yeah. Yeah.
I can imagine you really clearly off drugs. I can really see you. I can see you competent, driving, freestone heavier, living a life, sorted out, looking different.
I mean I can really really imagine it for you. That's the thing. That's the thing.
More obviously than I ever have with anybody. But like, do you think you deserve to be clean? Do you think you deserve to be happy?
I suppose is what I'm asking. I don't think you do think that you deserve it. I don't think anyone does who takes drugs, you know, addictively. There's loads of people that are going to die if they don't stop taking drugs and drinking. That sense that I had with Amy, the sense of inevitability of it, so like when I sort of think of someone like Karen, who's also a really, really smart woman, who's going to die if she doesn't stop taking drugs, that's how I see it.
Time to say goodbye, you said goodbye, we were time