Russell Brand: "I'd Rather Be a Drug Addict" Than Have Fame, Women

USMagazine, Monday, August 6, 2012, 12:40pm (PDT)

Despite being clean for 10 years, Russell Brand says he wishes he could be a drug addict again.

In his upcoming BBC documentary, Russell Brand: From Addiction to Recovery, the 37-year-old British comic watches footage of his younger self doing drugs.

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"This is when you know it's a disease. It doesn't matter that I was in that flat in Hackney and now I'm in the Savoy. I'm jealous of me then," he says while watching the video from his Savoy Hotel suite in London (via Daily Mail). "It doesn't make a difference to me. The money, the fame, the power, the sex, the women -— none of it. I'd rather be a drug addict."

The documentary, airing Thursday on BBC Three, follows Brand's struggle to overcome his heroin addiction and how he wants to challenge how society deals with addiction.

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On Sunday, Brand stepped out in Los Angeles with a new tattoo on his arm. "Lord, make a channel of thy peace," the new ink reads. The line, from a St. Francis of Assisi prayer, is featured in an Alcoholics Anonymous book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

Brand's divorce from singer Katy Perry was finalized July 16 after 14 months of marriage. During an interview with Howard Stern, the Rock of Ages star he was "really into the idea of marriage and having children." But he wouldn't share details of their conversation about starting family.

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"I don't want anything to hurt her. She's younger than me, she's a young woman and she's beautiful and she's sensitive and I care about her deeply ... I don't want to be too glib," he explained. "She'll read it and she'll be sad and I don't want that."

This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: Russell Brand: "I'd Rather Be a Drug Addict" Than Have Fame, Women