Musicians, Artists & Drugs
What's The Connection?

Written by: Dan Irish

Published 5/11/2008

Editing date - pre-edited 5/11/08

These topics have been addressed over and over again in the media for some years now, and I'm trying to find a new way to approach an old discussion. 

Since the dawn of man (we're told), men (and that is short for human, rather than a gender specific remark) have had a class of itself using mind-altering chemicals. For example, early man had "shaman" like individuals that used concoctions of mushroom and cactus extracts, bark, berries and roots and so on, to achieve a heightened awareness or a religious epiphany if you like. The people that used these concoctions were related to our modern artists and these drugs today are considered very dangerous and highly illegal in nearly every part of the world. But for tens of thousands of years, the "enlightened" or "chosen" member of every tribe or family unit had a tradition of using chemicals to either communicate with deities or to better understand the "unseen" aspects of their lives. These same artistic individuals come down to us through the mists of time as Druidic or Shamanistic types that had not only the respect of the ruling classes of their times, but the masses as well.

For example, in ancient Egypt at and around the pyramid complex, the mummies of some of the workers, architects and priests contain concentrations of both cocaine and hashish. The fact remains that this sort of thing was in wide use by both the upper and lower classes of a civilization, the artisans if you will. The same men and women, who at the end of the day were musicians as well as artists, erected the tallest and nearly perfect mathematical structures that dot Egypt even today, many thousands of years later.

As time marches on, we have the cult of Dionysus for the Greeks and Minoan cultures, and Bacchus for our Roman forefathers. They used drugs of this potion-sort to great extent in the ancient world for ritual worship of deities and those rockin’ fertility rights and so on. The classical fresco's of the day show large numbers of flutists and pipers and so on, dancing in order, as if musical talent was a requirement of membership to these cults. If we go a little more forward in time, we come to the medieval "crusader junkie." It's been shown that during the crusades, many an injured knight was treated with "poppy juice" for pain and as a result, can (and I'm sure did) become addicted to its use. You may not be aware, but the knights were educated in poetry and music as well as the art of war. They had squires, pages and a whole household of people, including musicians and artists, traveling to the holy land with them. So to find drugs like hashish and opium there was no real trick, and in great quantity. The knights whole household could just sit back, relax and enjoy the beauty the middle east afforded them, until the fall of Jerusalem of course. Meanwhile over here in the Americas, the native populations were using cactus and peyote buttons for rituals of manhood, and to get groovy with their gods. These same people were drummers for their gods and were designing the pottery and textiles that we see today in our museums. 

Evidence of this drug using "sub-culture" disappears from the written record about this time, or does it? Were the masters of the Renaissance a bunch of stoners? There's no way to know, but think about the potions that so many apothecaries were producing at this time- to ward off everything from a bad cold to "The Black Death." Surely, the knowledge passed down by the midwives or the village “old lady” was used in laboratories that people had out in the barn with the horses and chickens. But what one discovers over this journey through time is that the “intellectual” classes of mans civilizations (the artists and musicians that were invited to stay in the palace of the reigning king or duke) are repeatedly at the center of this “drug using” sub-culture.

Today, we look at the artists’ class in our society as leaders in science and math, and engineers and so on. But there are so many artists, that go unnoticed by the world, simply because there are too many of them to be seen as individuals! We lose artists like Jimi Hendrix, hoarking to death on German Quaaludes. Janis Joplin, who had the entire country in her beautiful hands, drinking herself to death, Kurt Cobain, depressed at the end of a smack runner and BAM, what a mess. What a waste! All of these people were giants, creative giants! Their dance with drugs & alcohol is directly responsible for their demise. So many others, too numerous to mention but all equally as important to the world, end their lives the same way, either by accident or design.  

History has shown us that man does continue on in his advancement towards whatever our ultimate goal turns out to be, but why do the creative members of our species wrestle so hard with these "drug" issues? It was the creative intellects of their time that gave us cave drawings, necklace design, and (judging from what I’ve seen in Neanderthal dig sites) I bet it was a “creative” caveman that started burying their loved ones with tokens of their lives and flowers. Others have wrestled with addiction, or abuse as it may arguably be called, but none to the degree of the artist class.

There's more! The price of addiction can in no way be underestimated. History has shown us that the pyramids were built by the kind of people who would today rival our brightest minds. They could not, however, function in today's society with the practices that were common back then. The world has changed dramatically. Whether or not one uses drugs to commune with God or to simply be more creative, society as a whole looks down upon these people as “dead weight” at best, or something to be “driven out” of our communities at worst. The idea that so creative and vital a part of our human culture is actually the most prone to the most horrible types of addictions imaginable makes me think we need to look at ourselves more closely than might be comfortable.

Doctors today have all sorts of words for it, bi-polar disorder, attention deficit-hyper activity disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, the list is miles long and harder to pronounce than Shakespeare in Mandarin Chinese. So, let’s break it down and try to act like honest people about this. Drugs make you feel good. If they didn't people wouldn't do them right? But, for that elevated sense of indestructibility you receive, you have to pay for it with a "downside" as the modern slang calls it. At first the downside is easy to pay, it feels as if you paid nothing, so you immediately say " I want to go again!" This cycle repeats itself until, in many cases, death or prison is the final consequence.

Homelessness isn't even a deterrent for the die-hard addict. So, why then do musicians and artists have such a hard time with it? Again, I realize the problem isn't restricted to the creative, but statistically artists have the highest rate of addiction in any country at any period in history. I think that it's a fair thing to suppose on this topic. If you accept this theory, then we come again to- "why?"

Remember our friends the Egyptians? Spectrographic analysis of mummies found at or around the pyramid site show the use of cocaine among the workers and priests of the day. But they weren't cutting rails on the bathroom sink - they were smoking the leaves. A much less potent way to ingest it. The effect (I'm told) is like a mild sense of well-being. Nothing can compare to the way modern humans take cocaine. It's (and I'm speculating here) a million times more potent in powder form than smoking the leaves. So, did Rameses need rehab? Maybe not, maybe what he was taking in over the course of his life added up to no more than a couple of "rails" in today's market. Never the less, he would be deposed as a king or nobleman from any modern country if these "abuses" as we call them today, were brought to light.

The brain is the only answer to the question "why?" I say that because the brain of a creative person or artist is different, chemically and physically, to the brain of a warrior, politician or an athlete. The chemical make-up of the creative brain, allows for "out of the box" thinking, but at a price (that is for many) as high as their lives.

So what do we do? Do we have a right to protect artists from themselves? Would that sort of thinking rob us of our art? Should we condone it? Should we encourage them? Should we dismiss it as not our problem? Should we mobilize an army to dispose of all addictive drugs on the planet? Or should we just enjoy the music, painting, sculpture, and verse and learn to appreciate those who have suffered to bring it to us. I can't be a judge for all mankind. We can only judge for ourselves what is right and what is wrong.

I'm never too surprised to find that some musician or artist, that I have only just heard of and found their work to be something that moved me, suffered in some way with an addiction of one kind or another. Does that change the attitude I have about either the painting or the piece of music? Perhaps the creator of this art is someone that is my contemporary, or even a local peer. Do I refuse to allow the artist’s perception in his/her work to have less meaning for me? I hope not. I would like to think that a person like myself, a fellow human being with all the frailties and shortcomings that we all share, was able to touch me in some way or another with their work; regardless of his moral compass.

I find today that people are more or less willing to tolerate an artists idiosyncrasies in favor of their work, but that means these people are almost being given a license to commit suicide by that very standard. We don't allow that sort of behavior in our children or in our loved ones do we? We do however, allow or at least look the other way, when an artist behaves in such a way as to cause his loved ones a great deal of consternation. "He's an artist,” they say! We almost won't take an artist seriously without some sort of idiosyncratic behavior towards him or herself and society, will we? So, the cycle revolves on.

I asked a number of artists and musicians to participate in the writing of this column so I could give you a balanced look at the question from within the community of artists itself. The consensus is that today, drugs are looked at in the artists’ community with some loathing and contempt. For example, a producer I know, won't touch a musician or group of musicians without some pledge to sobriety in their professional dealings. "They can't get hammered at shows" one friend of mine tells me. I'll drop them the second one of them falls down on stage or makes my company look bad.”

An artist that also dabbles deeply in mathematical theory thinks that it depends more on what sort of dope you're doing. He tends to lean more towards the rights of pot smokers against the so-called "crack-heads" of our time. The general opinion from the younger musicians tends to lean that way as well. "You can drink or smoke pot, but when you start doing meth or cocaine and stuff like that, it's all over so quickly, that you hardly know you've been in the business at all" smirks one young guitarist.

Another young guitarist is of a much different opinion though. He states that, "Anything that you don't need to have in your body is bad for you, and people that cave to such indulgences can't be trusted to be consistent. It's not that I hate any of those people, I just don't think I can count on any of them to perform with any predictable talent. One night the guy's on and the next night he can't be trusted to put three chords together, or follow a 4/4 timing signature for more than a few seconds." 

All this being said, we see that even the working artists today feel as though drugs or alcohol can, and will, sabotage a career, yet still the abuse continues. This is justified by the idea that they are "more creative" when under the influence of one drug or another, or they just need to "get the edge off" because they aren't comfortable in crowds. Excuses for the abuse range anywhere from " I only dabble a little" to " I've been doing it for so long, that if I stopped now, I could die!"

So, what have we learned? Five thousand or more years ago, what we today call “abuse” was in fact a “requirement” to be taken seriously as artists. Whereas today the same thing still seems to apply, although we tend to condemn it under our breath, as a matter of show for the “straights” as they are sometimes called.

It's scary that artists seem to be relegated to this sort of self-destructive behavior in order to feel OK with themselves or even to be taken seriously by the "art loving public". As long as we look the other way where an artist is concerned, it will never change, and history has borne that out over and over again. 

 

Written by: Dan Irish

Back To May 2008 Cover

Home