Mark75

I don't know where to put this... I guess if there is enough activity it might end up on Daily Support Threads.

Anyway, another thread about "Gigging Musicians" got me thinking about this, and I just thought it would be fun to start people talking about creative people out there whom have dealt with chemical dependency issues, either alcohol or drugs...

So as a random place to start... I discovered these people on my Pandora "radio station" (It was also a fun entry on ABC Musicians...)

Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons. One album of theirs is "Conscious Contact". Some better known musicians on this album are members of Widespread Panic (a jam band) and Chuck Leavell (remember him - Allman Brothers). Here is a neat line...

from "Pure Life".

Anyway... If we could go one artist at a time...



Mark

Mattcake

I looked up some quotes from Stephen King, whose struggle with alcoholism and drug abuse is very well documented:

"Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jobs, but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we're puking in the gutter."

"I work until beer o'clock"

"I always drank, from when it was legal for me to drink. And there was never a time for me when the goal wasn't to get as hammered as I could possibly afford to. I never understood social drinking, that's always seemed to me like kissing your sister." O.o interview, Sept. 14, 2000

From Wikipedia:

Shortly after The Tommyknockers publication in 1987, King's family and friends staged an intervention, dumping evidence of his addiction taken from the trash including beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil, dextromethorphan (cough medicine) and marijuana, on the rug in front of him. As King related in his memoir [On Writing] he then sought help and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s, and has remained sober since.

Stephen King - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Freeport

Wow, I didn't know any of that about King. Kudos to him on sobriety. I'm in one of the creative lines of work mentioned above, and I think Cubile75 is onto something here. Being able to relate to one another on such levels is exactly why SR is so important!

Sugah

King talks pretty openly about it in "On Writing." There are many other writers out there who talk about their struggles. I've read books on the craft of writing by at least three other authors who are "one of us," though I won't mention them by name here. They are guardians of traditions and don't out themselves, but they do "speak the language."

F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the more famous drunken writers, though several biographers insist that he only wrote when sober.

For me? I thought I was a creative genius when I was drinking/using, though for every page of brilliant prose I produced, there were a hundred more that belonged in the trash. I didn't start writing seriously until I got sober.

Peace & Love,
Sugah

Maybelline

Hi Mark,
I know you posted this a long time ago - the connection, from all the stuff I've read and my own observations is that it isn't the drugs or alcohol so much as the high percentage of creative people who have depressive illnesses, and they self-medicating.

wheresthefun

Yup, 100% correct. By the way, howdy neighbor.

After leaving the road, and gigging, I put all of my musical energy towards writing. In my opinion, I never wrote a good song while drinking, every song I was ever proud of was written early in the day, before I got hammered. I often recorded songs under the influence, but the ideas and in some cases the entire songs came into my head while stone cold sober.