The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of day with some purchased relief.
Interpretation
Addicts seek to numb their emotional pain through substances to make life more bearable.
In this quote, Russell Brand emphasizes that for addicts, the primary focus is on finding ways to escape the harsh realities of life. The use of substances becomes a mechanism to dull the suffering associated with everyday existence, highlighting the profound need for relief in the face of overwhelming pain.
In practice
This quote could be shared in a support group for addiction recovery.
Perhaps if we could popularise through the techniques of branding and consumerism, a different idea, a different narrative, perhaps the world can change. After all it changes constantly and incessantly, it's just the perceptions that we have are governed by people with self-interest and are not inalignment with the health and safety of us as individuals or as a planet.
Say I feel all sad and self-indulgent, then get stung by a wasp, my misery feels quite abstract and I long just to be in spiritual pain once more - 'damn you tiny assassin, clad in yellow and black, how I crave my former innocence where melancholy was my only trial'.
I've never had a sustained period of medication for mental illness when I've not been on other drugs as well. It's just not something that I particularly feel I need. I know that I have dramatically changing moods, and I know sometimes I feel really depressed, but I think that's just life. I don't think of it as, "Ah, this is mental illness," more as, "Today, life makes me feel very sad." I know I also get unnaturally high levels of energy and quickness of thought, but I'm able to utilize that.
I know that's the sort of thing people say and I really hate it when people say the sort of things people say. I always think, 'You don't mean that, you just think it sounds good.
Im happy to be a part of the conversation, if more young people are talking about fracking instead of twerking were heading in the right direction. The people that govern us dont want an active population who are politically engaged, they want passive consumers distracted by the spectacle of which I accept I am a part.
When I was poor and I complained about inequality they said I was bitter. Now I'm rich and I complain about inequality they say I'm a hypocrite. I'm starting to think they just don't want to talk about inequality.
I looked upon a clock to find the truth. The hours were passing like ivory chess figures, striking piano notes, and the minutes raced on wires mounted like tin soldiers. Hours like tall ebony women with gongs between their legs, tolling continuously so that I could not count them. I heard the rolling of my heart-beats; I heard the footsteps of my dreams, and the beat of time was lost among them like the face of truth.
I say let me never be complete, I say may I never be content,I say deliver me from Swedish furniture, I say deliver me from clever arts, I say deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth,I say you have to give up! I say evolve, and let the chips fall where they may!
Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage._x000D_ Minds innocent and quiet take that for a hermitage:_x000D_ If I have freedom in my love, and in my Soul I am free,_x000D_ Angels alone, that soar above, enjoy such liberty.
No form of liberty is worth a darn [sic] which doesn't give us the right to do wrong now and then.
Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.
While you have a thing it can be taken from youβ¦..but when you give it, you have given it. no robber can take it from you. It is yours then forever when you have given it. It will be yours always. That is to give.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.