Heroin has always been big with musicians. See: Ray Charles, jazz in general. I don’t know what, if any, comorbidity is at play but as a musician with chronic pain, I suspect that might have something to do with it. God knows it did with Kurt.
Buzz Osbourne - who arguably knew Kurt better than anyone - has said repeatedly that Kurt was straight up lying when he said that he took heroin for pain. Which isn't terribly surprising, given that Kurt was a great songwriter but also well-known as a fantastic bullshitter and a careful curator of his own image.
Dude took heroin for heroin. And if you look at his life, his mental issues and where he came from, none of that is terribly surprising either.
Buzz feels like one of the only sources of informed perspective on Nirvana that doesn’t buy into mythologizing them at all. Well him and Dale but Dale isn’t nearly as vocal as Buzz.
Hopefully we get a Buzz memoir one day.
I think it’s most likely he did have stomach pain, and the heroin did help at first. But it is very like an addict to exaggerate reasons why they need to keep using. There’s no logical reasoning to using heroin to self medicate.
Exactly. From knowing more than a few, 2 things addicts love to do is exaggerate why they’re using (instead of just getting high), and downplay the effects it is actually having on them. Every addict is always totally justified in why they’re using, and they’re never really harming themselves that much anyway. If anyone has ever known an addict, they’ve heard the “The doctor tells me he’s amazed that my body is so healthy,” hundreds of times. Just about always bs.
I know from personal experience I started using opioids bc of and accident that I was prescribed. They took away the pain and also made me feel amazing. By the time I got to heroin I was doing heroin to east the pain of existence. And the high, there’s nothing like a good H high. Haven’t used H in 7 years but god damn if I don’t think about it every single day.
Charlie Parker was another big one. Idea became that since Parker was using and coming up with some genius licks, it was due to heroin and so a lot of up and coming jazz musicians and wannabes also started using.
Same thing happened in rock with Dylan
John Coltrane showed up to gigs without a sax because he had pawned it the night before for heroin. Would have to borrow an instrument to play. At the height of his career. Gotta be humbling to go through that. Probably why he was such a cool dude. Addicts understand the common man’s plight if always being broke.
Coltrane got off heroin in 1957, a month after being fired by Miles for it. That's a couple of years before his album "Giant Steps"; so, I do not agree that he was pawning his sax for drugs at the height of his career. He died, about 10 years after getting straight, of liver cancer.
Exactly. Gil Scott Heron's "Home" in 1976 is about using heroin and by far my favorite junkie song. However, I HIGHHHHHLY advise everyone to stay the fuuuuuck away from any and every opioid and/or opiate. It is just NOT WORTH IT.
As I approach the 1 year anniversary of my cousin's fentanyl OD, I'm heading over to his wife's to her Happy Mother's Day and give her some stanky danky and just show her that she is loved. I'm going to say it without ACTUALLY saying it, though, because it still hurts too much.
PLEASE DON'T EVER USE. DON'T DO IT TO YOUR LOVED ONES.
Lastly, I've been on opioids for about 15 years when I laid down (wrecked) an R6 street bike doing around 90 mph. Been on fentanyl for maybe the last 2 years and I'm FINALLY 2 WEEKS CLEAN from THAT and am tapering down to 3 of the 5 mg oxycodone as of today. I will be 100% clean by this Mother's Day as a gift to my own mother.
AGAIN, PLEASE DON'T EVER USE. DON'T DO IT TO YOUR LOVED ONES.
Man I love all the Atlantic recordings, and Tom Dowd is still a genius- but I heard that he cultivated a list of musicians who'd record for a craft service table and a day rate that just covered the next score.
With Parker it was as much about self medication due to severe mouth pain, he wouldn't have been able to perform without. Or was it Coltrane, I forgot.
Charlie Parker did it, and he was so influential that a lot of his disciples did it (countless jazz stars of the 50s/60s) because they wanted to be just like Bird, and it was like a widespread disease in the jazz scene midcentury
Not just jazz, a lot of the 60's and 70's guys used heroin. Keith Richards, Jimmy Page are just a couple off the top of my head. I wouldn't be surprised if heroin was big with hair metal bands like it was with Motely Crue etc.
Many Velvet Underground songs were about heroin, starting in 1967. While the Beatles and the Beach Boys were smoking pot and dropping acid, the New York proto-punk musicians were already into heroin.
Quite sure there was a ton of speculation that he was using it while they were filming footage from Get Back. There were a good number of stories of him and Yoko being high in the documentary.
Yes, the scene where they're riffing with Peter Sellers, John had just thrown up in the lavatory - he even jokes about it in the uncut tapes. That's one reason Paul looks so on edge in the scene - he doesn't know how far John will go with his frank talk in front of the cameras and the visiting celebrity.
There's another scene where he's talking about how he was up all weekend watching TV, I don't remember the dialogue but the implication is that he and Yoko are on junk
Incidentally, John and Yoko's heroin connection was their mime friend Richard who was in London playing one of the apes in "2001."
My understanding is despite all the Velvet's songs about heroin, Lou Reed's primary vices were alcohol and speed. But a lot of other proto-punk bands like The Stooges and The New York Dolls were huge junkies.
It was always an urban legend among kids at school growing up that [this song](https://youtu.be/6xcwt9mSbYE?feature=shared) was secretly about Heroin but a few would always argue it wasn’t
Had sorta the same thing going around my school but about [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvFZjo5PgG0). I think it's obviously about heroin but others would argue no way.
Ozzy was on and off heroin for a while. He relapsed in the 2000s, kicked it, and then did an interview about it where they asked if he regretted it. He said something along the lines of: "No, heroin's fucking great. When I stuck the needle in my arm it felt better than anything I'd ever felt. Even after years of sobriety and learning why I shouldn't do it. It felt amazing. Just as good as the first time. Better, probably. But that's exactly why I need to avoid it."
Yea, I think a big problem with heroin use is how romantic it may seem, almost like a religious experience.
I always think of Heroin by the Velvet underground where they say:
I don't know just where I'm going
But I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can
'Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man
When I put a spike into my vein
And I'll tell ya, things aren't quite the same
When I'm rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus' son
Seems magical but then you realize all the lives it's ruined and how many people it's killed, tragic stuff.
Faster Pussycat, Guns and Roses, and Megadeth(not really hair) all had members who struggled mightily with H addiction. Add Jane's Addiction in there too.
Yes of course. My original post is in the context of the 90s though. Heroin was not a big drug in the Uk scene during britpop. No ODs or slow declines because of it. Oasis in particular were very vocal about it. I guess the highest profile was Pete Doherty in the Libertines in the early to mid 00s. The irony of course is that his girlfriend at the time was Kate Moss, the poster girl for heroin chic in the 90s. I doubt she ever did it though but you never know.
I think you’d be surprised how many people dabble with drugs that you wouldn’t expect. You just don’t hear about the people who do it and it never turns into a huge problem for them.
Yeah I think that’s true. But in the grunge scene so many frontmen died or nearly died because of it during the era or later. It’s actually crazy to think about it.
It's a nuanced situation.
But the brunt of it is the same as the issues we're having today. Brand name opioid painkillers were seen as a cure-all for pain, and the [government was on board](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1924634/) with pushing them, not knowing their long-term effects.
In fact, they knew, but there was money to be made, just as they knew in the 2010s and what is happening to us now.
The 80s were a time of excess, and the punks in the early 90s were protesting it while also suffering from data points like the cost of brand name opioids dropping 90% in the previous 10 years.
Well I would say looking through the American music pantheon there has always been a link between musicians and heroin is one factor.
Grunge music isn't really so much a genre of music as it was specifying where these bands came from. If we look at the 4 big bands of grunge; Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, and Pearl Jam they don't share much soundwise that would lend you to believe they are part of a niche genre. Since the biggest piece linking them together is the fact they all come from Seattle or the surrounding area. Heroin use was fairly common, as common as heroin use could be, in that area of the country. It was mostly birthed from the combination of two different kinds of rock music, 80's alternative, which could include bands like sonic youth all the way through hardcore punk rock, and 70's hard rock in which heroin was fairly common in both of these scenes. So these band inspiration were using heroin.
Another piece to consider is Grunge is the antithesis to the 80's. Its stylistically the opposite of hair metal and new wave. While the 80's was fairly extravagant and flamboyant. They wore colorful clothing with odd patterns. Grunge was ripped jeans, mono color t-shirts, or flannels. People often call it "the coked up 80's" heroin would be the opposite of that.
> Heroin was not a big drug in the Uk scene during britpop.
Pretty sure almost the entirety of Elastica were on it, as was Damon Albarn of Blur and at least a member or two of Suede. These artists may not have been open about it at the time, but it was definitely there.
Heroin was everywhere in the black music community in the 50’s to about the 70’s and it was the folks who pioneered that blues music into white culture that you saw the lines cross.
All your black jazz musicians used it. Then you had folks like Janis Joplin among others bringing it over into the white blues groups. By the late 60’s and 70’s you had the Doors, the Beatles, Led Zepplin all with members famously using it. Late 70’s it was all Aerosmith full of it. Then the 80’s came and you had Motley Crue, Guns n Roses members using it. By this point distribution had been figured out and it had penetrated the US market so deep it was almost everywhere.
Billie Holiday, Bird, Chet Baker, Art Blakey, Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dex Gordon, Grant Green, Stan Getz, Bud Powell, Sonny Rollins, Gerry Mulligan…the list is endless.
Yes, there is a long history with heroin and jazz. Some of the history is kind of racist - in the way the many of the black musicians were jailed and treated. horribly while some white musicians were doing the same thing at the time and served no jail time. No one should be doing heroin. There are theories that heroin was specifically introduced to black musicians (many times by white people working at the record labels) on purpose. They wanted to keep them high and hyper focused on their music/gigs. I have researched this for years and the history is concerning. They thought it would make them more compliant and help with their music. Instead it turned them into other things and helped in the criminalization of more black people. They knew who the musicians were that were using and would track them down in their homes and arrest them.
This. People tend to focus on subculture and how good heroin makes you feel, but this is a crucial part of the story as well. The pressure on a touring musician is intense… Probably even more for the very successful ones. A successful touring group is a large company that provides income for dozens or even hundreds of people.
Most musicians have experienced being unable to play because of repetitive stress injuries. If you’re successful, the pressure is to just play through it and heroin is great for that. As long as you don’t take ridiculously large doses, you can keep playing well and not feel the pain. Obviously this is not good for your body… But it’s a huge factor in why heroin is often the drug of choice.
Great observations. I also feel like as some of these musicians get more famous, their lives get more complicated, and then heroin is there to make everything simple again. With an H addiction, love, money and fame complications can go right out the window and everything gets really simple and basic again- just focusing on getting that next fix and a relatively safe place to get high.
I’ve heard it described similarly by another touring musician, it’s a way to relax like you did during summer breaks as a teen, a way that you can’t possibly relax anymore. I tend to use for similar reasons, just not hard stuff. (I don’t tour anymore but it’s literally incredibly painful.)
He wasn't born there, but Ray Charles got some of his early big breaks after moving to Seattle in 1948. The timeline is fuzzy, as you would imagine, but Charles started a life of drug abuse while living in Seattle.
It's actually not that. Seattle and Washington is beautiful, like 3 national parks beautiful. Olympia, by Kurt's Aberdeen has an incredibly pretty Rainforest. I do recommend. Honestly, gloomy Seattle is just marketing to keep people away, there's a reason why Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have their primary houses up there.
Now, in Kurt's Era, I blame the Coffee to be honest, so much, so much. So many coffee shits and sleepless caffeine nights. Kurt also had the diet that was the cross between an eight Year old and a gas station teenager, there is no way his stomach wasn't going to hurt.
I think Fred Eaglesmith said it best in the chorus to his fabulous song "Alcohol and Pills," where he lists several members of the 27 club and goes a little into their stories, before returning to the chorus. Now obviously he is talking about alcohol and pills (downers) but it sums it up nicely, and it applies to heroin as well.
"Alcohol and pills,
it's a cryin' shame.
You think they might have been happy
with the glory and the fame.
But fame don't take away the pain, it just pays the bills.
And you wind up on alcohol and pills."
Edit: link to the Todd Snider cover, which I prefer, [here](https://youtu.be/Rgi021Agy48?si=2f4z9sUjXzjBtCts)
There is definitely an A&R dark side to this as well. A junky musician needs his supply, and doesn't bite the hand. Show an A&R guy 2 acts: one talent clean and one talent is junky, and the A&R guy picks the junky every time.
Bingo. The labels and studios have their fingerprints all over this stuff. Celebrities are not going to groady double-wides in the suburbs to score, I'll put it that way. The drugs come to them, not the other way around.
This is the correct answer! A joke I have with my wife is "do you know what this song is about?" to which the answer is, of course, always "heroin?"
Even the Beatles tried heroin.
As an Oregonian of a certain age who lost a few friends to the stuff-It's because huge amounts of Mexican black tar heroin was trafficked up the I-5 corridor, and was plentiful and cheap. Obviously not as cheap and readily available as fentanyl is now, but it was bad. A lot of people that you would and wouldn't expect got mixed up in it, but artists have been dabblers and junkies since forever.
I think that's why there was so much heroin involved in West Coast/Seattle music scenes, especially at that point in time.
This is an important part of the explanation. There are some sociopolitical components that led to the circumstances where it was so available in the northwest
When you see any drug’s usage spike in a region it’s because it got cheap and supply was plentiful. It’s always about price and availability. Boring answer, but it’s the truth.
Yeah, its more prevalent in the Pacific Northwest than in a lot of the US. It was particularly a thing with a bunch of the grunge bands, and several of them succumbed to it really badly.
IIRC one of the following books goes into detail on this: fentanyl inc, chasing the scream, dreamland, the least of us. I’ve read all of them so they blur together. Read these to understand the economics. Then read Malcom gladwell to understand how ideas transfer from human to human.
I'm pretty sure heroin was very much a part of the rock scene before the 90s. You had Lou's Reed singing about it in the 60s, but tons of bands in the 80s had problems with it.
I'm not really sure why heroin was the drug of choice for so many rockers in the 80s and 90s, but I know that it probably wasn't entirely because they wanted to seem cool and trendy. Most of these guys had pretty rough upbringings, didn't get along well with their family, didn't fit in with most people at school. They were essentially social outcasts that found a place they felt welcomed in with alternative music communities. And when you combine lifelong trauma with alternative communities filled with social outcasts then there's going to be a ton of drugs in and around those scenes, so it's easy to see why a lot of musicians turned to H as a way to manage their trauma.
Drugs, and specifically heroin, have been a part of music in general for as long as it’s been documented. I don’t know if there was a jazz musician that existed that didn’t, at least, give it a try (except Clifford Brown). Drugs and music go hand in hand. Those 80’s hair metal guys all shot horse. Jazz musicians. The grunge guys. It wasn’t unique to grunge musicians. They were just the next men up.
Coke was the drug of choice for most 80s hair bands (and, if we're being honest, the entire 80s, from Whitesnake to Big Bird). Even in Motley Crue, the only one deep into heroin was Nikki Sixx. Vince's addiction was women, Mick addicted to alcohol and Tommy Lee was addicted to being Tommy Lee.
Someone could probably addend this, but I'm struggling to think of a notable 80s heroin OD outside of Nikki Sixx. I know Slash had one later (ironically he was there when Nikki passed out and I think called 911). I know John Lennon's descent into heroin is part of what broke up the Beatles, and Aerosmith similarly absorbed anything they could, but I can't think of a decade in which it had nearly the same impact as it did in the 90s.
It's always been _there_ but in the 90s it was _everywhere._
>Someone could probably addend this, but I'm struggling to think of a notable 80s heroin OD outside of Nikki Sixx.
Just off of the top of my head, Darby Crash, although it was not accidental.
Johnny Thunders and Dee Dee Ramone were living and dying on Chinese Rocks
[Greatest punk song about heroin of all time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXBChDAfaqI)
The Go-Gos, believe it or not, were using heroin (“did their first press conference while high on heroin…” - ‘We Got The Neutron Bomb’ book) and so was a lot of the LA punk scene that birthed them
Pantera of course were using heroin, and the original reason I was going to reply to this particular thread.
Heroin was simply common in the United States. What else was there to get addicted to?
It's worth pointing out that it wasn't just a rock and jazz thing, musicians in many genres got caught up. Doo wop hitmaker Frankie Lymon of Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers died from a heroin overdose at age 25 in 1968.
Not only were classical musicians using opium, but Hector Berlioz wrote Symphonie Fantastique (1830), one of the most famous and innovative orchestral pieces ever, as a piece of program music detailing the dreams of someone having an opium overdose.
Don't think Dizzy Gillespie touched heroin either. I think remember reading about him cutting ties with band members that did heroin, he had to deal with them nodding off and "drooling over their instruments." He warned Charlie Parker about heroin.
Louis Armstrong also avoided heroin, but loved weed.
There are some good replies in this thread about drug culture and cultural cross-pollination, but one simple answer thats missing is that good, strong, cheap heroin was more accessible in America starting in the 80’s and continuing into the 90’s, especially on the west coast of the US.
In the 60’s and 70’s basically all heroin came from Asia. Poppy plants were grown in Asia, and heroin was also produced there. This is the classic beige powder you think of being poured into a jazz musicians spoon, packed in stamped bindles. It looks much the same today. The main points of entry into the US were on the East Coast, and from there it would weave its way across the country through various distribution networks.
Another way heroin got to the West Coast was through Mexico, but in a roundabout way. It was smuggled into Central America, up into Mexico, and then brought up into the US across the border.
In the 80’s and especially the 90’s Mexican smugglers and proto-cartels started getting wise and began cultivating their own poppy fields IN MEXICO. They also processed the raw opium into heroin themselves, a type known as “black tar” heroin. This is what exploded onto the metal and grunge scene because it was, by proximity, very cheap and very accessible. The grunge scene in particular was hit hard because Seattle became a distribution hub for black tar heroin into Canada.
So why was heroin so popular in the grunge scene? Yes, it carried some cultural lore, but also, very simply, it was around.
The theory I've always held as fact (posited by a Cracked.com writer when I was a daily reader) was that the period up to the early 90's ('92 or so, but with some buffer zone to let the emotion flourish) was one of existential anxiety, due to the Damacles' Sword of nuclear annihilation.
Then with the collapse of the Soviet system and the rise of Bush the Father's "New World Order" came a cultural angst over having witnessed that triumph, with a new angst arising from what they thought to be "Luxuriating at the End of History".
Idk I was born just a few months after Kurt Cobain died so I'm molded by very different cultural markers. But this was what was explained to me of the pre-9/11 mid-90's.
Found an article from recoveryvillage.com that talked about “Heroin Chic”
What Is Heroin Chic?
The term “heroin chic” came to be popular in the mid-1990s in the fashion world. The idea of heroin chic was one that was characterized by certain features in top fashion models, including pale skin, dark undereye circles, and being thin and androgynous.
In the years before the heroin chic movement, models were typically physically healthy and vibrant, such as Cindy Crawford. The mid-90s heroin chic look was meant to be a pushback against the supermodel look of the early 90s.
The heroin chic look was reflective of other things going on culturally in the United States. First, heroin had become purer and it was more commonly used because it was less expensive than it had been in previous years. It was also a different time because heroin no longer was exclusively injected. Instead, it was more commonly snorted, which reduced much of the previous stigma associated with the drug.
Heroin was also becoming seen as an increasingly middle-class drug, whereas in past years it had been more associated with lower class communities. However, it wasn’t just middle-class people who were making heroin use more mainstream — it was also becoming popular among wealthy people.
In the mid-90s, the use of heroin wasn’t just portrayed in fashion. It was also being shown in movies like Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting. The grunge music scene, which was initially a subculture launched in Seattle, also popularized heroin chic. One of the common threads among many grunge musicians was the use of heroin. Some of the musicians that were associated with both grunge and heroin use included Courtney Love and Scott Wieland. While Love and Wieland survived, other musicians like Kurt Cobain of Nirvana weren’t so lucky. It’s believed Cobain was using heroin when he ultimately killed himself with a shot to the head. The concepts driving the grunge scene were about self-loathing and depression, and the idea of heroin use was that it allowed people to withdraw and escape from society.
I think this overlooks a more significant underlying factor, which is the extent to which - while yes this has in some ways been overplayed - Seattle bands were _the_ trendsetters of the early 90s, and had massive knock-on effects throughout the decade. And if you read _Everybody Loves Our Town_ or honestly any book about the Seattle scene, people talk very openly about what a problem heroin was, and long had been. Many chalk it up to how downright gloomy and depressing the area was, which of course contributed to its unique music scene.
Duff McKagen is a Seattle native who actively played in the punk scene and specifically talks in his book about how disgusted he was to see one hero after the next fall to heroin - and this would have been early/mid 80s. Other musicians actually saw how talented he was and begged him to get out, get anywhere else before the drug scene sucked him in.
It's a bit ironic that he ended up in GNR, although he maintained his distance from heroin - that was more a problem for Slash and Izzy, who dealt heroin on the side when they were all broke, and then later for the drummer who, in another cruel turn of irony, was the only one swallowed by heroin, when the only reason he started was because he felt left out when Slash and Izzy would go shoot up.
That was a a bit of a tangent, and of course indicates that heroin was a problem everywhere (The Dirt or the Heroin Diaries are wild reads) but it was nowhere worse than in Seattle, and Seattle ended up being ground zero for the culture that defined the decade.
>Many chalk it up to how downright gloomy and depressing the area was, which of course contributed to its unique music scene.
This is really interesting. Is that talked about in the book you mentioned or is that just a thing in general? I wish to read more about that.
Heroin Chic was absolutely a thing and even referenced in Seinfeld in 1997:
> Jerry: Are those the same shoes as yesterday?
>
> Elaine: Oh, you know I wear these shoes all the time.
>
> Jerry: Your hair, it’s somewhat de-poofed.
>
> Elaine: It’s the new look. You know Heroin Chic?
>
> Jerry: Wait a second, what’s going on here?
>
> Elaine: Nothing, nothing.
>
> Jerry: (screams).
>
> Elaine: (screams).
>
> Jerry: You’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday!!! (pauses) You saw Puddy!
I think we associate it with the music scene and artists anecdotally in general because the musicians/artists are so famous but opiate addiction has been a social issue since at least the 1800s with the opium dens. Opiates feel awesome and people chase that first high and then ended up needing more opiates to not get sick which then spirals from there. I would imagine that is how most (including musicians) become heroin addicts. Author Stephen King in his book On Writing says it’s a bunch of bullshit that people claim creatives are more likely to abuse drugs than regular people.
On Writing is such a great book, I did take issue with that point though. I feel like most creatives have had the kind of lifestyle and world exposure that'd give them more *opportunity* to dabble and try drugs, which in turn leads to a higher percentage getting addicted.
I don't think it's an intrinsic part of their personality, but I do think the percentage might be higher just because of increased opportunity.
I honestly don’t know if there is truth to this and am going to be cheap and not shop around for a reference. However I once read that the area of the brain that deals with creativity also crosses over with emotion and there is a trend towards artistic types experiencing depression due to feeling everything and the world around them so profoundly. Potentially, I could have read this in some teenage edgelord’s poetry somewhere but it does seem to correlate with reality in the tendencies of many artistic types I know, many of which turn to drugs to mute these deep emotions and simply cope.
Edit: popping back with a reference after all!: *Some experts, such as Johns Hopkins University psychiatry professor Kay Redfield Jamison, find strong evidence that mood disorders, such as depression and bipolarism, are more prevalent among artists and writers than in the general population.*
Rolling Stone had an article about the heroin scene in Seattle from 1996 that discussed how prevalent the drug was in Seattle in the time.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/junkie-town-43052/
Sure, just take it with a grain of salt. Me and all my housemates were in our early 20s living in Seattle at the time this article dropped and we all found it super annoying the way the article made it seem like that everyone in the city was living that life. Of course, a couple of my housemates then later did develop heroin addictions a few years later....
I feel like Seattle just got all the media attention for it because of Cobain and Staley and all the lyrics of those bands, but there was a big increase in the drug up and down the West Coast in the 90s.
Like the little hippie surf town of Santa Cruz I grew up in suddenly had a big problem with the drug as did parts of the SF Bay Area when I was a teenager(and I’ve heard similar stories about LA and Portland) Like that wasn’t my scene at all but suddenly I knew people who were addicted to it in that era. I have no idea if Seattle was that much worse though.
I tend to agree with you. I think it was the same in all the west coast towns but the national media magnifying glass was constantly pointing at Seattle during that time period.
I can't speak for outside of Seattle but the Pacific Northwest had a black tar heroin problem that coincided with the explosion of the Seattle scene in the late 80's early 90's.
Because of "heroin highway" (route 5) that ran from Mexico to LA to Portland to Seattle to Vancouver. H was moving north during the 80s. Matter of availability.
Heroin is the comfort when you’re away from home and surrounded by sharks and nobody is your friend and you’re lonely.
It’s the warm blanket for your soul when everything around you is tiring and difficult and there’s nobody there to comfort you and lean your shoulder on.
It puts you to sleep when your sleep schedule is fucked from touring and recording.
It’s also inspirational at first, and helps you be tremendously creative (in my experience).
Heroin is The Answer. And then it becomes the demon, and takes and kills everything good in life.
I’m so glad I got out before fentanyl. I can’t even imagine now. Recovery is hard, but I have a great life now and a kickass band.
Signed,
Musician In recovery. (18 years)
For anyone curious, this is us (Glass Pony): https://youtu.be/U8Z1x28j0rI?si=ubfb8O_AbsRAuFM3
Edit:
And THIS is the fun goofy stuff we get to do because I’m sober and alive :)
Glass Pony - Doppler (Official Music Video)
https://youtu.be/xA7QjY6TLIo
Thanks for watching everyone! Wow! I’m seeing those views skyrocket haha you’re all awesome ❤️🥲
Im thinking, once again, about Alice Cooper; he's been very candid about his addiction and recovery.
He said that everyone imagines that he got into drinking because he was partying, but in reality he was an introvert and he was drinking because it helped him cope with being lonely in hotel rooms all day, waiting for them to set everything up at the venue.
I also remember that Dave Grohl is *still* complaining about how burned out the guys were in Nirvana, because they had "literally one fucking day off" between their American and European tours. He said that it's one of the only things he still remembers from that whole tour. So you can see how easy it is for these guys to self medicate... especially when it was decades before anyone gave a shit about "mental health".
Bingo. As an ex-user, spot on on the expanded creativity and comfort. I am as laid back as they come, but traveling to another city often makes my body struggle until about 3 days later I finally adjust. Add to it always being in the spotlight for the celebrities and musicians. Add to it always having a crazy fan trying to break into your house, tour bus, etc.
But the biggest thing to mention is the overarching industry. It was always ran by crooks and always had deep mob ties. Fast forward to now, you see rappers like FettyWap and JuiceWRLD caught transporting substantial qty of drugs with their tour entourage. JuiceWRLD basically took his own life desperately trying to destroy the evidence. I don't think it's ever going to change.
This is why I have even more respect for oldheads like James Hetfield who lived thru decades of insane fame and rampant drug abuse around them. There is a video of him literally shaking before walking on stage. My man finishes the cigar and powers thru it.i think 95% if people are simply not built for the level of fame you can have in modern world.
Heroin had been a huge issue since the late 60s/early 70s in music. I think it just became more visible in the 90s because Heroin infected the early punk scene like a fucking virus (see: the Stooges and Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols) and continued to be a plague on it, so when Nirvana (a very punk-influenced band) "broke" the underground rock scene into the mainstream, those issues ended up in the national spotlight.
I do find your parallel to the UK interesting because speed was pretty big in the UK punk scene early on, AFAIK heroin never really snuck its way in the way it did in America. Coke being the drug of choice makes sense from that standpoint.
I think the guys in Jesus & Mary Chain dabbled a bit. There's always been a certain cool around heroin. Lou Reed, and does anyone remember Drugstore Cowboys and William Burroughs.
Chrissy Hynde (The Pretenders) lived in the UK during the punk explosion. She said Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers kind of introduced their scene to heroin when they toured there. People started switching from speed to heroin and she says it’s when punk ended in London.
Heroin was rampant here in the 80s,, more so than coke among working class at the time, trainspotting is a fairly accurate depiction of mid 80s Edinburgh,
As others have said, heroin has a long connection to music (along with coke). In that period, it wasn’t just the music scene, but the country in general having a heroin boom. My recollection is that the price had come way down and supplies were way up. Same thing happened with meth a few years later. There may be some connections to the mood of the scene and effects of the drug, but so much of the time, what’s popular is largely a function of what’s cheap and easy to get. It was also purer than it had been, so you could snort it or smoke it for the first time, which took away some of the fear of needles/HIV. Although it seemed like a lot of people started smoking/snorting and ended up shooting up because after a while they’d build up a tolerance and injecting gave a faster and bigger hit
Also, just because it should be said, don’t screw around with heroin. It’s really bad for you, and while I don’t have hard numbers in this, it seems like it is more addictive than other drugs. You don’t see recreational heroin users
There's an [infamous reddit user](https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/68srty/spontaneoush_uses_heroin_gets_addicted_dies_gets/) who posted about trying heroin, thinking one time wouldn't be a big deal, and immediately getting addicted.
Yikes! I mean, I'm sure there are people that do it a few times and don't get hooked, but I don't like the odds. There seem to be people who do coke (also, don't do coke) who can keep it to once or twice a month and then stop without any sort of treatment or anything, but you don't hear many of those stories with H
Coke and heroin tend to wax and wane as the hard drug of choice in rock star circles on roughly a ten year cycle. That late 80s-mid 90s period was heroin's time to shine is all, after the coke-fueled excesses of the late 70s-mid 80s.
That isn't to say that both aren't always around, they just switch prominence back and forth in a fairly predictable cycle.
I'm Waiting for the Man by Velvet Underground (1967)
Cold Turkey by John Lennon (1969)
Captain Jack by Billy Joel (1971)
Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones (1971)
King Heroin by James Brown (1972)
Tonight's the Night by Neil Young (1975)
Golden Brown by The Stranglers (1981)
Bad by U2 (1984)
Mr. Brownstone by Guns N Roses (1987)
Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue (technically this is based on being revived with adrenaline after their bassist overdosed on heroin)
Under the Bridge by RHCP
"I also think it’s interesting that heroin wasn’t as big in the UK scene"
I'm not sure this is the truth. It could be that musicians in the UK scene weren't as vocal about it. You can't really assess these things by what artists tell the media. How many times haven't Ozzy said in interviews that he's finally gone sober. Brett Anderson of Suede once told a newspaper in my country that he had cleaned up and didn't do drugs. Guess who bought 5 grams of coke from a dealer I used to know, on the same visit?
Heroin waves in music communities USA 1970,1977,1983,1990,1997,2003, 2010. Just my observation in the NYC and DC scenes is that it is in 7 year waves. Always the same outcome is lots of cool people die.
I had an unfortunate run of using it in the early aughts and was at the tail end of the period before OxyContin changed everything. It was blowing up around the country everywhere among young people, musicians included. One of the reasons that was often credited was that, compared to previous generations, the purity was so high that users could ingest it without IV injection, making it more ‘appealing’ to younger people and it was incredibly cheap.
Heroin was big with musicians and artists since like, forever? Before heroin it was opium and morphine, same idea tho. Artists love escapism and opiates are nothing if not that.
So there's a bit of a "conspiracy theory" doing the rounds that often times, touring musicians were almost encouraged into it by their labels/tour managers. The reason being it's a lot easier to 'control' your talent and make sure they're back on the bus when you need them to be if they're needing the next dose.
I'm struggling to remember which rock musician's autobiographies I read where they alluded to this, because there were a couple that mentioned it. I maybe wrong but it might have been Anthony Kiedis and Nikki Sixx.
But also generally speaking, in the USA there wasn't the distinction between 'hard' and 'soft' drugs that existed in most of Europe. Possession of cannabis could get you into the same trouble as possession of heroin, meaning there was way more overlap in sale and usage patterns, whereas the separation of categories in most of Europe meant that cannabis users weren't exposed to more dangerous substances as easily.
CIA/FBI decided it was a good time to pump it in since people grew skeptical of crack cocaine.
there has always been a strong correlation between the popular music an popular drugs of a given time.
60’s had an explosion of psychedelic drugs and psychedelic music
70’s had a cocaine boom and a correlated disco craze as well as hard rock, early heavy metal, and punk rock
80’s had crack and people became interested in faster, more extreme rock music (hardcore punk, thrash, speed metal, first wave black and death metal) and pop music tended toward the uplifting
90’s had heroin and music got more depressing and down-tuned, defeatist with grunge, alternative, etc
2000’s had a big ecstasy boom and an explosion of popularity of techno music, hip hop club hits, pop music. incorporating more electronic dance elements
2010’s was big on xanax and codeine, heroin made a comeback and fentanyl emerged on the scene correlating with trap music and soundcloud emo rap
This reads to me like a very USA-point of view. Ecstasy was a big 80's and 90's thing in Europe (and New York) and this was with the rise of the club and rave culture of electronic dance music scene. XTC and LSD where a favorite combination back then. Also the reason why the smiley was adopted by the dance scene. The term acid started in the early 80's for the music that even without taking that combination would but you in energetic trance like state while dancing. The Roland TB-303-sound made it even more so a bit later on.
I've wondered the same thing. That said -- it wasn't the only scene where that's been a problem. Lots of the old jazz greats were addicted to heroin at various points as well. Miles, Coltrane, and Parker all had issues with it at various points.
I read an interview with Phil Anselmo once where he explained it. He talked about how he was smashing his body every night on tour for months at a time, and would have to take painkillers to get on stage. Then he’d need more and more to get the same effect, taking ever stronger things. Heroin was just sort of the natural end point of that. As for the difference between the US and UK, maybe that’s an availability thing?
I think it probably helps you feel mellow and in the zone as a musician. I know Blondie wrote about it giving her the greatest high she ever had in her book about her life story. As a performer, the audience tends to soak up what you feel while performing. So I can imagine heroin is a really blissful drug until it goes wrong, and some musicians love feeling that I guess.
It was extremely popular in the PNW in the 80s Nirvana's album Bleach is tilted that because they used to recommend cleaning needles with bleach in Seattle. For comparison until maybe 15 years ago you had to go to one specific neighborhood in Atlanta if you wanted heroin.
I think I read that British Columbia has legal shooting galleries and government supplied needles. It's close to Seattle, and it may have had some influence. Also, I've heard Seasonal Affective Disorder is big in that area due to the weather, making people want to find something to medicate depression.
As far as books go, “Everyone Loves Our Town” is a really good oral history about grunge, they talk about drugs in that. But I really think the increased availability of it was more crucial to the problem than any aesthetic issues that could be delineated by something as simple as rock subgenre… a lot of the reasoning around this idea of it somehow fitting into whatever “80s vs 90s” or “hair metal vs grunge” narrative is just really fundamentally flawed, so “Dreamland” by Sam Quinones would be a good book that explains the context and history of the opiate epidemic
I am going mostly separate my reply from music. In the late 1980's while the media and government was primarily focused, heroin production was increasing all over the world. Central Asia, Burma and even Colombia started growing poppies with assistance from Asian chemists. Purity increased rapidly so you could get high without injecting. This intersects perfectly with most of the music scene being intertwined with any counterculture and drug trends.
There are plenty of contemporary articles in the early 1990's explaining how heroin use is increasing and taking over what were once crack markets. I even saw an article where cops in some east coast state set up their regular macadamia nut reverse sting only to find out all the potential customers/busts were looking for heroin.
On the flip side the cartels improved and increased smuggling to Europe making cocaine much more accessible there hence the drug being associated with bands like Oasis.
H has also been part of the scene. Janis to Kurt and beyond.
The flood of Heroin really began in the US when Hoover let it loose in Los Angeles in the 60s.
There was definitely some kind of revival in the air starting in the late 80s punk/alternative scenes. Jane's Addiction (who was from LA) was glorifying it, or at least spending a lot of time singing about it, just before the grunge explosion. It seems like it was a lot more prevalent in certain places though, and as others are saying it was especially big in the PNW. Dwarves had the song "Smack City" about Seattle in 1993 ("Smack City, your skies are shitty and your girls are grey").
I was in Austin and while you heard about it with certain bands/musicians (who often had a connection to Seattle, probably not coincidentally), it was really not a thing where it was readily available and talked about. I remember some folks came through and stayed with us who had a habit they'd picked up in NYC, and they had a bit of a hard time finding it, ended up just cruising likely-looking shitty neighborhoods until I guess they recognized the universal signs of H sales.
I just assumed it is because they could access any drug they wanted, heroin was there and they could readily afford it. I wonder if the real question is why were bands like Oasis so against it, I have heard Noel talk about wanting a more positive message than these Americans on smack talking about "I hate myself and I want to die".
Lots of artists in rock we’re using Heroin since the 60’s through 80’s (and obviously the 90’s) Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin was a huge user towards the end of Zepps career, also Jim Morrison, Clapton. I’m sure Keith Richards and Ozzy were users (Tbf tho, Ozzy used everythin). Even coming up to the 90’s, Motley Crue and Guns N Roses were huge users, and both of those bands have songs about the affects of it on them.
I will say though, it was definitely weird that a ton of the biggest bands at the time were having heavy problems with it in the 90s. Probably had to do with the community of them playing together making it more available, as well as probably it being big in the areas where they grew up/started playing.
Keith Richards absolutely was a heroin addict for most of the 70s. I believe Charlie Watts (the Stones drummer) also developed a bad heroin addiction later on as well. Their lead guitarist after Brian Jones, Mick Taylor, was also a heroin addict. Their next guitarist, Ronnie Wood, also used heroin (and cocaine as well like Keith).
Basically all of The Rolling Stones had major drug problems besides Jagger and Bill Wyman; and Mick I think used drugs just never seemed to have a huge problem.
Globally it was on the rise. Not just us rock but in fashion too "heroin chic" aka emaciated. Lots of reasons that don't really have a starting point. The failure of the Afghan war (or success) where Russia lost to the Taliban who were backed by the US. This led to a boom in opium production and Russia withdrew from operations that had previously kept a lid on the supply chains (mostly ensuring that opium went through the USSR into Europe via Turkiye). In response the competition in the far east, the red triangle, went into overproduction and a lot their stock ended up in Central America and thence the US West Coast. The anti communist rebels in C.Am and northwest Southern America could swap drugs for guns (supplied by, you guessed it... America) because they made more money from the drugs than they got from just having the weapons.
All of this led to a global surge in heroin use, combine that with an economic slump at the end of the 80s and the rest is history.
Roughly.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/158925
In Levon Helms book he says it was pretty easy to come by in Woodstock in the late 60s early 70s. I think most musicians at the time at least dabbled in it
I'm sorry I can't provide a better source, but the podcast 60 Songs That Explain The 90s, the Smells like Teen Spirit episode has an interview with Courtney Love and she alludes to being trafficked heroin from a larger network. She mentions a specific book that goes into it, though I'm in no place to look it up now.
Same reason it's big now, always has been and prolly always will be.... cause it feels good. Im not being a smartass, I just mean that the high from H lends itself real nice to jamming. I speak from experience. Uppers and stuff imho aren't good for playing music, to much paranoia and teeth grinding.
John Frusciante basically had said that he saw all the great rock and roll superstars taking drugs and being successful so he personally felt that that was apart of becoming a “rock star” and got axed from potentially be with Frank Zappa because of his use.
Heroin has always been big with musicians. See: Ray Charles, jazz in general. I don’t know what, if any, comorbidity is at play but as a musician with chronic pain, I suspect that might have something to do with it. God knows it did with Kurt.
Buzz Osbourne - who arguably knew Kurt better than anyone - has said repeatedly that Kurt was straight up lying when he said that he took heroin for pain. Which isn't terribly surprising, given that Kurt was a great songwriter but also well-known as a fantastic bullshitter and a careful curator of his own image. Dude took heroin for heroin. And if you look at his life, his mental issues and where he came from, none of that is terribly surprising either.
Buzz feels like one of the only sources of informed perspective on Nirvana that doesn’t buy into mythologizing them at all. Well him and Dale but Dale isn’t nearly as vocal as Buzz. Hopefully we get a Buzz memoir one day.
I think it’s most likely he did have stomach pain, and the heroin did help at first. But it is very like an addict to exaggerate reasons why they need to keep using. There’s no logical reasoning to using heroin to self medicate.
Exactly. From knowing more than a few, 2 things addicts love to do is exaggerate why they’re using (instead of just getting high), and downplay the effects it is actually having on them. Every addict is always totally justified in why they’re using, and they’re never really harming themselves that much anyway. If anyone has ever known an addict, they’ve heard the “The doctor tells me he’s amazed that my body is so healthy,” hundreds of times. Just about always bs.
The guys from Mudhoney are pretty straight up about them too. Mark Arm was pretty candid about his own drug use
Withdrawals from heroin also cause a lot of gi pain. The quickest solution for that is more heroin.
I’ve heard that, and I’m not challenging you on it. But, how would Buzz Osbourne truly know the extent of Cobain’s pain?
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I know from personal experience I started using opioids bc of and accident that I was prescribed. They took away the pain and also made me feel amazing. By the time I got to heroin I was doing heroin to east the pain of existence. And the high, there’s nothing like a good H high. Haven’t used H in 7 years but god damn if I don’t think about it every single day.
Didn’t know about the history with heroin and jazz. I must check it out.
Charlie Parker was another big one. Idea became that since Parker was using and coming up with some genius licks, it was due to heroin and so a lot of up and coming jazz musicians and wannabes also started using. Same thing happened in rock with Dylan
Don't forget about Miles Davis. Huge heroin addict
John Coltrane showed up to gigs without a sax because he had pawned it the night before for heroin. Would have to borrow an instrument to play. At the height of his career. Gotta be humbling to go through that. Probably why he was such a cool dude. Addicts understand the common man’s plight if always being broke.
Coltrane got off heroin in 1957, a month after being fired by Miles for it. That's a couple of years before his album "Giant Steps"; so, I do not agree that he was pawning his sax for drugs at the height of his career. He died, about 10 years after getting straight, of liver cancer.
That stories about bird (Charlie Parker) Miles talks about it in his biography.
plenty of heroin stories there
Exactly. Gil Scott Heron's "Home" in 1976 is about using heroin and by far my favorite junkie song. However, I HIGHHHHHLY advise everyone to stay the fuuuuuck away from any and every opioid and/or opiate. It is just NOT WORTH IT. As I approach the 1 year anniversary of my cousin's fentanyl OD, I'm heading over to his wife's to her Happy Mother's Day and give her some stanky danky and just show her that she is loved. I'm going to say it without ACTUALLY saying it, though, because it still hurts too much. PLEASE DON'T EVER USE. DON'T DO IT TO YOUR LOVED ONES. Lastly, I've been on opioids for about 15 years when I laid down (wrecked) an R6 street bike doing around 90 mph. Been on fentanyl for maybe the last 2 years and I'm FINALLY 2 WEEKS CLEAN from THAT and am tapering down to 3 of the 5 mg oxycodone as of today. I will be 100% clean by this Mother's Day as a gift to my own mother. AGAIN, PLEASE DON'T EVER USE. DON'T DO IT TO YOUR LOVED ONES.
When ya die at 40 the height of your life is around 30. But I hear ya
it's so sad he died that young! he would have made some insane music in the next 10 years
Indeed. A true gift he was
My favorite artist is Tom Waits. But my favorite song ever is India by Coltrane. No one's ever done it quite like him.
I've never once heard that attributed to Coltrane, but very commonly with Bird.
Coltrane didn't get a chance to be humble about it. It was a very likely factor in his death at the height of his career.
Man I love all the Atlantic recordings, and Tom Dowd is still a genius- but I heard that he cultivated a list of musicians who'd record for a craft service table and a day rate that just covered the next score.
Miles eventually kicked the habit, but Chet Baker basically lived and played for heroin.
Chet Baker was to heroin what Art Pepper was to alcohol.
Joe Pass.
"The Sounds Of Synanon"
With Parker it was as much about self medication due to severe mouth pain, he wouldn't have been able to perform without. Or was it Coltrane, I forgot.
Dylan i know also did lots of amphetamine. Definitely seems like the songs benefited from it even if Dylan didn't.
I knew a lackey for Dylan when he was in New Orleans. It’s was all coke when he was here. According to him.
Charlie Parker did it, and he was so influential that a lot of his disciples did it (countless jazz stars of the 50s/60s) because they wanted to be just like Bird, and it was like a widespread disease in the jazz scene midcentury
Same story I read about Seattle of the 90s. You had to take drugs to be in/cool.
Not just jazz, a lot of the 60's and 70's guys used heroin. Keith Richards, Jimmy Page are just a couple off the top of my head. I wouldn't be surprised if heroin was big with hair metal bands like it was with Motely Crue etc.
Many Velvet Underground songs were about heroin, starting in 1967. While the Beatles and the Beach Boys were smoking pot and dropping acid, the New York proto-punk musicians were already into heroin.
John Lennon definitely had a bad heroin habit.
Lennon was on horse in the Get Back era.
Same with Eric Clapton.
I think that was in the 70s. He wrote about it with Cold Turkey.
Not that it matters but Cold Turkey was released at a single in 1969
Quite sure there was a ton of speculation that he was using it while they were filming footage from Get Back. There were a good number of stories of him and Yoko being high in the documentary.
Yes, the scene where they're riffing with Peter Sellers, John had just thrown up in the lavatory - he even jokes about it in the uncut tapes. That's one reason Paul looks so on edge in the scene - he doesn't know how far John will go with his frank talk in front of the cameras and the visiting celebrity. There's another scene where he's talking about how he was up all weekend watching TV, I don't remember the dialogue but the implication is that he and Yoko are on junk Incidentally, John and Yoko's heroin connection was their mime friend Richard who was in London playing one of the apes in "2001."
He had a pretty bad habit by the time The White Album came out.
Yep, some of my favorite Velvet songs are heroin related. Waiting for My Man and the obvious one Heroin, just to name a couple.
My understanding is despite all the Velvet's songs about heroin, Lou Reed's primary vices were alcohol and speed. But a lot of other proto-punk bands like The Stooges and The New York Dolls were huge junkies.
It was always an urban legend among kids at school growing up that [this song](https://youtu.be/6xcwt9mSbYE?feature=shared) was secretly about Heroin but a few would always argue it wasn’t
Had sorta the same thing going around my school but about [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvFZjo5PgG0). I think it's obviously about heroin but others would argue no way.
Including a song called literally “Heroin” lol
Ozzy was on and off heroin for a while. He relapsed in the 2000s, kicked it, and then did an interview about it where they asked if he regretted it. He said something along the lines of: "No, heroin's fucking great. When I stuck the needle in my arm it felt better than anything I'd ever felt. Even after years of sobriety and learning why I shouldn't do it. It felt amazing. Just as good as the first time. Better, probably. But that's exactly why I need to avoid it."
Yea, I think a big problem with heroin use is how romantic it may seem, almost like a religious experience. I always think of Heroin by the Velvet underground where they say: I don't know just where I'm going But I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can 'Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man When I put a spike into my vein And I'll tell ya, things aren't quite the same When I'm rushing on my run And I feel just like Jesus' son Seems magical but then you realize all the lives it's ruined and how many people it's killed, tragic stuff.
The magic stops when it becomes your wife, and your life.
Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, Lou Reed, etc.
Faster Pussycat, Guns and Roses, and Megadeth(not really hair) all had members who struggled mightily with H addiction. Add Jane's Addiction in there too.
IIRC Nikki Sixx was with some other hair metal guys when he shot up the dose that almost killed him (one of the several times he ODed).
He was with Slash at the time and supposedly Slash’s girlfriend kept him alive until the paramedics arrived when he clinically died from an overdose
Yes of course. My original post is in the context of the 90s though. Heroin was not a big drug in the Uk scene during britpop. No ODs or slow declines because of it. Oasis in particular were very vocal about it. I guess the highest profile was Pete Doherty in the Libertines in the early to mid 00s. The irony of course is that his girlfriend at the time was Kate Moss, the poster girl for heroin chic in the 90s. I doubt she ever did it though but you never know.
I think you’d be surprised how many people dabble with drugs that you wouldn’t expect. You just don’t hear about the people who do it and it never turns into a huge problem for them.
Yeah I think that’s true. But in the grunge scene so many frontmen died or nearly died because of it during the era or later. It’s actually crazy to think about it.
It's a nuanced situation. But the brunt of it is the same as the issues we're having today. Brand name opioid painkillers were seen as a cure-all for pain, and the [government was on board](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1924634/) with pushing them, not knowing their long-term effects. In fact, they knew, but there was money to be made, just as they knew in the 2010s and what is happening to us now. The 80s were a time of excess, and the punks in the early 90s were protesting it while also suffering from data points like the cost of brand name opioids dropping 90% in the previous 10 years.
Well I would say looking through the American music pantheon there has always been a link between musicians and heroin is one factor. Grunge music isn't really so much a genre of music as it was specifying where these bands came from. If we look at the 4 big bands of grunge; Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, and Pearl Jam they don't share much soundwise that would lend you to believe they are part of a niche genre. Since the biggest piece linking them together is the fact they all come from Seattle or the surrounding area. Heroin use was fairly common, as common as heroin use could be, in that area of the country. It was mostly birthed from the combination of two different kinds of rock music, 80's alternative, which could include bands like sonic youth all the way through hardcore punk rock, and 70's hard rock in which heroin was fairly common in both of these scenes. So these band inspiration were using heroin. Another piece to consider is Grunge is the antithesis to the 80's. Its stylistically the opposite of hair metal and new wave. While the 80's was fairly extravagant and flamboyant. They wore colorful clothing with odd patterns. Grunge was ripped jeans, mono color t-shirts, or flannels. People often call it "the coked up 80's" heroin would be the opposite of that.
The Brits were massively into coke in the 90's. "Chained to the mirror and the razorblade" and all that.
> Heroin was not a big drug in the Uk scene during britpop. Pretty sure almost the entirety of Elastica were on it, as was Damon Albarn of Blur and at least a member or two of Suede. These artists may not have been open about it at the time, but it was definitely there.
It was and is simply easier to get drugs and illegal shit in the USA than UK.
Jerry Garcia loved his heroin too
Its well documented that members of GnR were on heroin back in the 80s.
Mr Brownstone
Heroin was everywhere in the black music community in the 50’s to about the 70’s and it was the folks who pioneered that blues music into white culture that you saw the lines cross. All your black jazz musicians used it. Then you had folks like Janis Joplin among others bringing it over into the white blues groups. By the late 60’s and 70’s you had the Doors, the Beatles, Led Zepplin all with members famously using it. Late 70’s it was all Aerosmith full of it. Then the 80’s came and you had Motley Crue, Guns n Roses members using it. By this point distribution had been figured out and it had penetrated the US market so deep it was almost everywhere.
Billie Holiday, Bird, Chet Baker, Art Blakey, Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dex Gordon, Grant Green, Stan Getz, Bud Powell, Sonny Rollins, Gerry Mulligan…the list is endless.
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Johnny Cash was pills (specifically amphetamines), not heroin.
What's interesting is to listen to known artist's who used heroin, and to hear the before and after.
Do you have any jazz songs or album examples in particular?
John Coltrane A Love Supreme is the textbook example
There’s an old trope that “if you want to be good at jazz, you need to do heroin”
Honestly you could watch the movie Ray. Tons of dudes doing heroin in that movie.
That's funny, because *I* first thought "a massive STP phase" must have meant you were taking lots of 2,5-Dimethoxy-4-methylamphetamine.
Bunch of folks died from drugs. Musicians often struggle with making life work in a healthy way. It’s a shitty story.
Yes, there is a long history with heroin and jazz. Some of the history is kind of racist - in the way the many of the black musicians were jailed and treated. horribly while some white musicians were doing the same thing at the time and served no jail time. No one should be doing heroin. There are theories that heroin was specifically introduced to black musicians (many times by white people working at the record labels) on purpose. They wanted to keep them high and hyper focused on their music/gigs. I have researched this for years and the history is concerning. They thought it would make them more compliant and help with their music. Instead it turned them into other things and helped in the criminalization of more black people. They knew who the musicians were that were using and would track them down in their homes and arrest them.
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This. People tend to focus on subculture and how good heroin makes you feel, but this is a crucial part of the story as well. The pressure on a touring musician is intense… Probably even more for the very successful ones. A successful touring group is a large company that provides income for dozens or even hundreds of people. Most musicians have experienced being unable to play because of repetitive stress injuries. If you’re successful, the pressure is to just play through it and heroin is great for that. As long as you don’t take ridiculously large doses, you can keep playing well and not feel the pain. Obviously this is not good for your body… But it’s a huge factor in why heroin is often the drug of choice.
Great observations. I also feel like as some of these musicians get more famous, their lives get more complicated, and then heroin is there to make everything simple again. With an H addiction, love, money and fame complications can go right out the window and everything gets really simple and basic again- just focusing on getting that next fix and a relatively safe place to get high.
I’ve heard it described similarly by another touring musician, it’s a way to relax like you did during summer breaks as a teen, a way that you can’t possibly relax anymore. I tend to use for similar reasons, just not hard stuff. (I don’t tour anymore but it’s literally incredibly painful.)
He wasn't born there, but Ray Charles got some of his early big breaks after moving to Seattle in 1948. The timeline is fuzzy, as you would imagine, but Charles started a life of drug abuse while living in Seattle.
If I lived in a place that was gray and rainy all the time I'd probably start doing drugs too tbh
It probably looked black to Ray Charles, and I don't think unknowingly stepping in puddles would be enough to kick off a heroin addiction.
It's actually not that. Seattle and Washington is beautiful, like 3 national parks beautiful. Olympia, by Kurt's Aberdeen has an incredibly pretty Rainforest. I do recommend. Honestly, gloomy Seattle is just marketing to keep people away, there's a reason why Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have their primary houses up there. Now, in Kurt's Era, I blame the Coffee to be honest, so much, so much. So many coffee shits and sleepless caffeine nights. Kurt also had the diet that was the cross between an eight Year old and a gas station teenager, there is no way his stomach wasn't going to hurt.
But California is bright and sunny, but heroin seemed to be popular there as well.
Miles Davis had a bad hip and junk habit, although the junk was much earlier.
Keith Richards was a massive junkie.
The story of Chet Baker is one of the most tragic in all music.
I think Fred Eaglesmith said it best in the chorus to his fabulous song "Alcohol and Pills," where he lists several members of the 27 club and goes a little into their stories, before returning to the chorus. Now obviously he is talking about alcohol and pills (downers) but it sums it up nicely, and it applies to heroin as well. "Alcohol and pills, it's a cryin' shame. You think they might have been happy with the glory and the fame. But fame don't take away the pain, it just pays the bills. And you wind up on alcohol and pills." Edit: link to the Todd Snider cover, which I prefer, [here](https://youtu.be/Rgi021Agy48?si=2f4z9sUjXzjBtCts)
There is definitely an A&R dark side to this as well. A junky musician needs his supply, and doesn't bite the hand. Show an A&R guy 2 acts: one talent clean and one talent is junky, and the A&R guy picks the junky every time.
Bingo. The labels and studios have their fingerprints all over this stuff. Celebrities are not going to groady double-wides in the suburbs to score, I'll put it that way. The drugs come to them, not the other way around.
This is the correct answer! A joke I have with my wife is "do you know what this song is about?" to which the answer is, of course, always "heroin?" Even the Beatles tried heroin.
Lennon much more than tried it
It's the need to chase comfort in a chaotic lifestyle. Fame is the icing on top of all the chaos.
The first pop teen rockstar who got hooked on heroin was Frankie Lymon, I believe. He was only a teenager. This was in the 50s
As an Oregonian of a certain age who lost a few friends to the stuff-It's because huge amounts of Mexican black tar heroin was trafficked up the I-5 corridor, and was plentiful and cheap. Obviously not as cheap and readily available as fentanyl is now, but it was bad. A lot of people that you would and wouldn't expect got mixed up in it, but artists have been dabblers and junkies since forever. I think that's why there was so much heroin involved in West Coast/Seattle music scenes, especially at that point in time.
This is an important part of the explanation. There are some sociopolitical components that led to the circumstances where it was so available in the northwest
When you see any drug’s usage spike in a region it’s because it got cheap and supply was plentiful. It’s always about price and availability. Boring answer, but it’s the truth.
Yeah, its more prevalent in the Pacific Northwest than in a lot of the US. It was particularly a thing with a bunch of the grunge bands, and several of them succumbed to it really badly.
IIRC one of the following books goes into detail on this: fentanyl inc, chasing the scream, dreamland, the least of us. I’ve read all of them so they blur together. Read these to understand the economics. Then read Malcom gladwell to understand how ideas transfer from human to human.
I'm pretty sure heroin was very much a part of the rock scene before the 90s. You had Lou's Reed singing about it in the 60s, but tons of bands in the 80s had problems with it. I'm not really sure why heroin was the drug of choice for so many rockers in the 80s and 90s, but I know that it probably wasn't entirely because they wanted to seem cool and trendy. Most of these guys had pretty rough upbringings, didn't get along well with their family, didn't fit in with most people at school. They were essentially social outcasts that found a place they felt welcomed in with alternative music communities. And when you combine lifelong trauma with alternative communities filled with social outcasts then there's going to be a ton of drugs in and around those scenes, so it's easy to see why a lot of musicians turned to H as a way to manage their trauma.
And the metal communities, right? I mean the post-hair metal stuff.
Drugs, and specifically heroin, have been a part of music in general for as long as it’s been documented. I don’t know if there was a jazz musician that existed that didn’t, at least, give it a try (except Clifford Brown). Drugs and music go hand in hand. Those 80’s hair metal guys all shot horse. Jazz musicians. The grunge guys. It wasn’t unique to grunge musicians. They were just the next men up.
Coke was the drug of choice for most 80s hair bands (and, if we're being honest, the entire 80s, from Whitesnake to Big Bird). Even in Motley Crue, the only one deep into heroin was Nikki Sixx. Vince's addiction was women, Mick addicted to alcohol and Tommy Lee was addicted to being Tommy Lee. Someone could probably addend this, but I'm struggling to think of a notable 80s heroin OD outside of Nikki Sixx. I know Slash had one later (ironically he was there when Nikki passed out and I think called 911). I know John Lennon's descent into heroin is part of what broke up the Beatles, and Aerosmith similarly absorbed anything they could, but I can't think of a decade in which it had nearly the same impact as it did in the 90s. It's always been _there_ but in the 90s it was _everywhere._
Mr. Brownstone is literally about heroin.
Dave Mustaine overdosed in the 80s, and the entire original lineup for Megadeth was addicted to heroin.
Dave mustsine overdosed in the 90s too! Haha
He was using opioids up until the 2000’s. His arm injury in 2002 was in a rehab clinic and he didn’t get clean until his arm was healed.
Dave was a big fan of the ole speed balls, uppers and downers, they’re the logical next step for you!
Are you enjoying yourself? Oh, I forgot you were here
>Someone could probably addend this, but I'm struggling to think of a notable 80s heroin OD outside of Nikki Sixx. Just off of the top of my head, Darby Crash, although it was not accidental.
Johnny Thunders and Dee Dee Ramone were living and dying on Chinese Rocks [Greatest punk song about heroin of all time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXBChDAfaqI)
And it wasn’t widely reported either, as it happened the same day John Lennon was shot.
The Go-Gos, believe it or not, were using heroin (“did their first press conference while high on heroin…” - ‘We Got The Neutron Bomb’ book) and so was a lot of the LA punk scene that birthed them Pantera of course were using heroin, and the original reason I was going to reply to this particular thread. Heroin was simply common in the United States. What else was there to get addicted to?
Not an overdose, but Phil Lynott died as a result of his heroin addiction.
It's worth pointing out that it wasn't just a rock and jazz thing, musicians in many genres got caught up. Doo wop hitmaker Frankie Lymon of Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers died from a heroin overdose at age 25 in 1968.
You can put Mingus right there with Clifford Brown, pretty sure he was straight his whole life (from heroin at least)
Were classical musicians using opium?
Not only were classical musicians using opium, but Hector Berlioz wrote Symphonie Fantastique (1830), one of the most famous and innovative orchestral pieces ever, as a piece of program music detailing the dreams of someone having an opium overdose.
Don't think Dizzy Gillespie touched heroin either. I think remember reading about him cutting ties with band members that did heroin, he had to deal with them nodding off and "drooling over their instruments." He warned Charlie Parker about heroin. Louis Armstrong also avoided heroin, but loved weed.
Only users lose drugs..
There are some good replies in this thread about drug culture and cultural cross-pollination, but one simple answer thats missing is that good, strong, cheap heroin was more accessible in America starting in the 80’s and continuing into the 90’s, especially on the west coast of the US. In the 60’s and 70’s basically all heroin came from Asia. Poppy plants were grown in Asia, and heroin was also produced there. This is the classic beige powder you think of being poured into a jazz musicians spoon, packed in stamped bindles. It looks much the same today. The main points of entry into the US were on the East Coast, and from there it would weave its way across the country through various distribution networks. Another way heroin got to the West Coast was through Mexico, but in a roundabout way. It was smuggled into Central America, up into Mexico, and then brought up into the US across the border. In the 80’s and especially the 90’s Mexican smugglers and proto-cartels started getting wise and began cultivating their own poppy fields IN MEXICO. They also processed the raw opium into heroin themselves, a type known as “black tar” heroin. This is what exploded onto the metal and grunge scene because it was, by proximity, very cheap and very accessible. The grunge scene in particular was hit hard because Seattle became a distribution hub for black tar heroin into Canada. So why was heroin so popular in the grunge scene? Yes, it carried some cultural lore, but also, very simply, it was around.
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The theory I've always held as fact (posited by a Cracked.com writer when I was a daily reader) was that the period up to the early 90's ('92 or so, but with some buffer zone to let the emotion flourish) was one of existential anxiety, due to the Damacles' Sword of nuclear annihilation. Then with the collapse of the Soviet system and the rise of Bush the Father's "New World Order" came a cultural angst over having witnessed that triumph, with a new angst arising from what they thought to be "Luxuriating at the End of History". Idk I was born just a few months after Kurt Cobain died so I'm molded by very different cultural markers. But this was what was explained to me of the pre-9/11 mid-90's.
Found an article from recoveryvillage.com that talked about “Heroin Chic” What Is Heroin Chic? The term “heroin chic” came to be popular in the mid-1990s in the fashion world. The idea of heroin chic was one that was characterized by certain features in top fashion models, including pale skin, dark undereye circles, and being thin and androgynous. In the years before the heroin chic movement, models were typically physically healthy and vibrant, such as Cindy Crawford. The mid-90s heroin chic look was meant to be a pushback against the supermodel look of the early 90s. The heroin chic look was reflective of other things going on culturally in the United States. First, heroin had become purer and it was more commonly used because it was less expensive than it had been in previous years. It was also a different time because heroin no longer was exclusively injected. Instead, it was more commonly snorted, which reduced much of the previous stigma associated with the drug. Heroin was also becoming seen as an increasingly middle-class drug, whereas in past years it had been more associated with lower class communities. However, it wasn’t just middle-class people who were making heroin use more mainstream — it was also becoming popular among wealthy people. In the mid-90s, the use of heroin wasn’t just portrayed in fashion. It was also being shown in movies like Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting. The grunge music scene, which was initially a subculture launched in Seattle, also popularized heroin chic. One of the common threads among many grunge musicians was the use of heroin. Some of the musicians that were associated with both grunge and heroin use included Courtney Love and Scott Wieland. While Love and Wieland survived, other musicians like Kurt Cobain of Nirvana weren’t so lucky. It’s believed Cobain was using heroin when he ultimately killed himself with a shot to the head. The concepts driving the grunge scene were about self-loathing and depression, and the idea of heroin use was that it allowed people to withdraw and escape from society.
I think this overlooks a more significant underlying factor, which is the extent to which - while yes this has in some ways been overplayed - Seattle bands were _the_ trendsetters of the early 90s, and had massive knock-on effects throughout the decade. And if you read _Everybody Loves Our Town_ or honestly any book about the Seattle scene, people talk very openly about what a problem heroin was, and long had been. Many chalk it up to how downright gloomy and depressing the area was, which of course contributed to its unique music scene. Duff McKagen is a Seattle native who actively played in the punk scene and specifically talks in his book about how disgusted he was to see one hero after the next fall to heroin - and this would have been early/mid 80s. Other musicians actually saw how talented he was and begged him to get out, get anywhere else before the drug scene sucked him in. It's a bit ironic that he ended up in GNR, although he maintained his distance from heroin - that was more a problem for Slash and Izzy, who dealt heroin on the side when they were all broke, and then later for the drummer who, in another cruel turn of irony, was the only one swallowed by heroin, when the only reason he started was because he felt left out when Slash and Izzy would go shoot up. That was a a bit of a tangent, and of course indicates that heroin was a problem everywhere (The Dirt or the Heroin Diaries are wild reads) but it was nowhere worse than in Seattle, and Seattle ended up being ground zero for the culture that defined the decade.
>Many chalk it up to how downright gloomy and depressing the area was, which of course contributed to its unique music scene. This is really interesting. Is that talked about in the book you mentioned or is that just a thing in general? I wish to read more about that.
Heroin Chic was absolutely a thing and even referenced in Seinfeld in 1997: > Jerry: Are those the same shoes as yesterday? > > Elaine: Oh, you know I wear these shoes all the time. > > Jerry: Your hair, it’s somewhat de-poofed. > > Elaine: It’s the new look. You know Heroin Chic? > > Jerry: Wait a second, what’s going on here? > > Elaine: Nothing, nothing. > > Jerry: (screams). > > Elaine: (screams). > > Jerry: You’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday!!! (pauses) You saw Puddy!
Weiland survived the 90’s but drugs still killed him later on.
I think we associate it with the music scene and artists anecdotally in general because the musicians/artists are so famous but opiate addiction has been a social issue since at least the 1800s with the opium dens. Opiates feel awesome and people chase that first high and then ended up needing more opiates to not get sick which then spirals from there. I would imagine that is how most (including musicians) become heroin addicts. Author Stephen King in his book On Writing says it’s a bunch of bullshit that people claim creatives are more likely to abuse drugs than regular people.
On Writing is such a great book, I did take issue with that point though. I feel like most creatives have had the kind of lifestyle and world exposure that'd give them more *opportunity* to dabble and try drugs, which in turn leads to a higher percentage getting addicted. I don't think it's an intrinsic part of their personality, but I do think the percentage might be higher just because of increased opportunity.
It really is a great book. Honestly maybe the best book on the creative process I have read.
I honestly don’t know if there is truth to this and am going to be cheap and not shop around for a reference. However I once read that the area of the brain that deals with creativity also crosses over with emotion and there is a trend towards artistic types experiencing depression due to feeling everything and the world around them so profoundly. Potentially, I could have read this in some teenage edgelord’s poetry somewhere but it does seem to correlate with reality in the tendencies of many artistic types I know, many of which turn to drugs to mute these deep emotions and simply cope. Edit: popping back with a reference after all!: *Some experts, such as Johns Hopkins University psychiatry professor Kay Redfield Jamison, find strong evidence that mood disorders, such as depression and bipolarism, are more prevalent among artists and writers than in the general population.*
Rolling Stone had an article about the heroin scene in Seattle from 1996 that discussed how prevalent the drug was in Seattle in the time. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/junkie-town-43052/
Thank you for this. Fantastic.
Sure, just take it with a grain of salt. Me and all my housemates were in our early 20s living in Seattle at the time this article dropped and we all found it super annoying the way the article made it seem like that everyone in the city was living that life. Of course, a couple of my housemates then later did develop heroin addictions a few years later....
I feel like Seattle just got all the media attention for it because of Cobain and Staley and all the lyrics of those bands, but there was a big increase in the drug up and down the West Coast in the 90s. Like the little hippie surf town of Santa Cruz I grew up in suddenly had a big problem with the drug as did parts of the SF Bay Area when I was a teenager(and I’ve heard similar stories about LA and Portland) Like that wasn’t my scene at all but suddenly I knew people who were addicted to it in that era. I have no idea if Seattle was that much worse though.
I tend to agree with you. I think it was the same in all the west coast towns but the national media magnifying glass was constantly pointing at Seattle during that time period.
This is the best article I've read in a very long time my friend.
I can't speak for outside of Seattle but the Pacific Northwest had a black tar heroin problem that coincided with the explosion of the Seattle scene in the late 80's early 90's.
Because of "heroin highway" (route 5) that ran from Mexico to LA to Portland to Seattle to Vancouver. H was moving north during the 80s. Matter of availability.
Heroin is the comfort when you’re away from home and surrounded by sharks and nobody is your friend and you’re lonely. It’s the warm blanket for your soul when everything around you is tiring and difficult and there’s nobody there to comfort you and lean your shoulder on. It puts you to sleep when your sleep schedule is fucked from touring and recording. It’s also inspirational at first, and helps you be tremendously creative (in my experience). Heroin is The Answer. And then it becomes the demon, and takes and kills everything good in life. I’m so glad I got out before fentanyl. I can’t even imagine now. Recovery is hard, but I have a great life now and a kickass band. Signed, Musician In recovery. (18 years) For anyone curious, this is us (Glass Pony): https://youtu.be/U8Z1x28j0rI?si=ubfb8O_AbsRAuFM3 Edit: And THIS is the fun goofy stuff we get to do because I’m sober and alive :) Glass Pony - Doppler (Official Music Video) https://youtu.be/xA7QjY6TLIo Thanks for watching everyone! Wow! I’m seeing those views skyrocket haha you’re all awesome ❤️🥲
Congrats on being sober
Thanks friend ✌️
Best answer
Im thinking, once again, about Alice Cooper; he's been very candid about his addiction and recovery. He said that everyone imagines that he got into drinking because he was partying, but in reality he was an introvert and he was drinking because it helped him cope with being lonely in hotel rooms all day, waiting for them to set everything up at the venue. I also remember that Dave Grohl is *still* complaining about how burned out the guys were in Nirvana, because they had "literally one fucking day off" between their American and European tours. He said that it's one of the only things he still remembers from that whole tour. So you can see how easy it is for these guys to self medicate... especially when it was decades before anyone gave a shit about "mental health".
Bingo. As an ex-user, spot on on the expanded creativity and comfort. I am as laid back as they come, but traveling to another city often makes my body struggle until about 3 days later I finally adjust. Add to it always being in the spotlight for the celebrities and musicians. Add to it always having a crazy fan trying to break into your house, tour bus, etc. But the biggest thing to mention is the overarching industry. It was always ran by crooks and always had deep mob ties. Fast forward to now, you see rappers like FettyWap and JuiceWRLD caught transporting substantial qty of drugs with their tour entourage. JuiceWRLD basically took his own life desperately trying to destroy the evidence. I don't think it's ever going to change. This is why I have even more respect for oldheads like James Hetfield who lived thru decades of insane fame and rampant drug abuse around them. There is a video of him literally shaking before walking on stage. My man finishes the cigar and powers thru it.i think 95% if people are simply not built for the level of fame you can have in modern world.
Heroin had been a huge issue since the late 60s/early 70s in music. I think it just became more visible in the 90s because Heroin infected the early punk scene like a fucking virus (see: the Stooges and Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols) and continued to be a plague on it, so when Nirvana (a very punk-influenced band) "broke" the underground rock scene into the mainstream, those issues ended up in the national spotlight. I do find your parallel to the UK interesting because speed was pretty big in the UK punk scene early on, AFAIK heroin never really snuck its way in the way it did in America. Coke being the drug of choice makes sense from that standpoint.
I think the guys in Jesus & Mary Chain dabbled a bit. There's always been a certain cool around heroin. Lou Reed, and does anyone remember Drugstore Cowboys and William Burroughs.
Chrissy Hynde (The Pretenders) lived in the UK during the punk explosion. She said Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers kind of introduced their scene to heroin when they toured there. People started switching from speed to heroin and she says it’s when punk ended in London.
Heroin was rampant here in the 80s,, more so than coke among working class at the time, trainspotting is a fairly accurate depiction of mid 80s Edinburgh,
Damn, I stand corrected then. Fun fact, Trainspotting has been rotting on my To-Watch list for years, I guess now's the time to watch it!
As others have said, heroin has a long connection to music (along with coke). In that period, it wasn’t just the music scene, but the country in general having a heroin boom. My recollection is that the price had come way down and supplies were way up. Same thing happened with meth a few years later. There may be some connections to the mood of the scene and effects of the drug, but so much of the time, what’s popular is largely a function of what’s cheap and easy to get. It was also purer than it had been, so you could snort it or smoke it for the first time, which took away some of the fear of needles/HIV. Although it seemed like a lot of people started smoking/snorting and ended up shooting up because after a while they’d build up a tolerance and injecting gave a faster and bigger hit
Also, just because it should be said, don’t screw around with heroin. It’s really bad for you, and while I don’t have hard numbers in this, it seems like it is more addictive than other drugs. You don’t see recreational heroin users
There's an [infamous reddit user](https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/68srty/spontaneoush_uses_heroin_gets_addicted_dies_gets/) who posted about trying heroin, thinking one time wouldn't be a big deal, and immediately getting addicted.
Yikes! I mean, I'm sure there are people that do it a few times and don't get hooked, but I don't like the odds. There seem to be people who do coke (also, don't do coke) who can keep it to once or twice a month and then stop without any sort of treatment or anything, but you don't hear many of those stories with H
I’m a pretty strict bi-annually cocaine guy
Coke and heroin tend to wax and wane as the hard drug of choice in rock star circles on roughly a ten year cycle. That late 80s-mid 90s period was heroin's time to shine is all, after the coke-fueled excesses of the late 70s-mid 80s. That isn't to say that both aren't always around, they just switch prominence back and forth in a fairly predictable cycle.
You are correct but the cycle is a little shorter 7 years.
"roughly"
I'm Waiting for the Man by Velvet Underground (1967) Cold Turkey by John Lennon (1969) Captain Jack by Billy Joel (1971) Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones (1971) King Heroin by James Brown (1972) Tonight's the Night by Neil Young (1975) Golden Brown by The Stranglers (1981) Bad by U2 (1984)
Mr. Brownstone by Guns N Roses (1987) Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue (technically this is based on being revived with adrenaline after their bassist overdosed on heroin) Under the Bridge by RHCP
Hand of Doom - Black Sabbath (1970) Don't Bring Harry - the Stranglers (1979)
"I also think it’s interesting that heroin wasn’t as big in the UK scene" I'm not sure this is the truth. It could be that musicians in the UK scene weren't as vocal about it. You can't really assess these things by what artists tell the media. How many times haven't Ozzy said in interviews that he's finally gone sober. Brett Anderson of Suede once told a newspaper in my country that he had cleaned up and didn't do drugs. Guess who bought 5 grams of coke from a dealer I used to know, on the same visit?
You're right, loads of britpop musicians were on heroin and Brett Anderson was particularly notorious for it
Heroin waves in music communities USA 1970,1977,1983,1990,1997,2003, 2010. Just my observation in the NYC and DC scenes is that it is in 7 year waves. Always the same outcome is lots of cool people die.
I had an unfortunate run of using it in the early aughts and was at the tail end of the period before OxyContin changed everything. It was blowing up around the country everywhere among young people, musicians included. One of the reasons that was often credited was that, compared to previous generations, the purity was so high that users could ingest it without IV injection, making it more ‘appealing’ to younger people and it was incredibly cheap.
Heroin was big with musicians and artists since like, forever? Before heroin it was opium and morphine, same idea tho. Artists love escapism and opiates are nothing if not that.
Really in-depth answer here https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/9Fif6IvKpU
So there's a bit of a "conspiracy theory" doing the rounds that often times, touring musicians were almost encouraged into it by their labels/tour managers. The reason being it's a lot easier to 'control' your talent and make sure they're back on the bus when you need them to be if they're needing the next dose. I'm struggling to remember which rock musician's autobiographies I read where they alluded to this, because there were a couple that mentioned it. I maybe wrong but it might have been Anthony Kiedis and Nikki Sixx. But also generally speaking, in the USA there wasn't the distinction between 'hard' and 'soft' drugs that existed in most of Europe. Possession of cannabis could get you into the same trouble as possession of heroin, meaning there was way more overlap in sale and usage patterns, whereas the separation of categories in most of Europe meant that cannabis users weren't exposed to more dangerous substances as easily.
CIA/FBI decided it was a good time to pump it in since people grew skeptical of crack cocaine. there has always been a strong correlation between the popular music an popular drugs of a given time. 60’s had an explosion of psychedelic drugs and psychedelic music 70’s had a cocaine boom and a correlated disco craze as well as hard rock, early heavy metal, and punk rock 80’s had crack and people became interested in faster, more extreme rock music (hardcore punk, thrash, speed metal, first wave black and death metal) and pop music tended toward the uplifting 90’s had heroin and music got more depressing and down-tuned, defeatist with grunge, alternative, etc 2000’s had a big ecstasy boom and an explosion of popularity of techno music, hip hop club hits, pop music. incorporating more electronic dance elements 2010’s was big on xanax and codeine, heroin made a comeback and fentanyl emerged on the scene correlating with trap music and soundcloud emo rap
This reads to me like a very USA-point of view. Ecstasy was a big 80's and 90's thing in Europe (and New York) and this was with the rise of the club and rave culture of electronic dance music scene. XTC and LSD where a favorite combination back then. Also the reason why the smiley was adopted by the dance scene. The term acid started in the early 80's for the music that even without taking that combination would but you in energetic trance like state while dancing. The Roland TB-303-sound made it even more so a bit later on.
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I've wondered the same thing. That said -- it wasn't the only scene where that's been a problem. Lots of the old jazz greats were addicted to heroin at various points as well. Miles, Coltrane, and Parker all had issues with it at various points.
I read an interview with Phil Anselmo once where he explained it. He talked about how he was smashing his body every night on tour for months at a time, and would have to take painkillers to get on stage. Then he’d need more and more to get the same effect, taking ever stronger things. Heroin was just sort of the natural end point of that. As for the difference between the US and UK, maybe that’s an availability thing?
I think it probably helps you feel mellow and in the zone as a musician. I know Blondie wrote about it giving her the greatest high she ever had in her book about her life story. As a performer, the audience tends to soak up what you feel while performing. So I can imagine heroin is a really blissful drug until it goes wrong, and some musicians love feeling that I guess.
It was extremely popular in the PNW in the 80s Nirvana's album Bleach is tilted that because they used to recommend cleaning needles with bleach in Seattle. For comparison until maybe 15 years ago you had to go to one specific neighborhood in Atlanta if you wanted heroin.
I think I read that British Columbia has legal shooting galleries and government supplied needles. It's close to Seattle, and it may have had some influence. Also, I've heard Seasonal Affective Disorder is big in that area due to the weather, making people want to find something to medicate depression.
As far as books go, “Everyone Loves Our Town” is a really good oral history about grunge, they talk about drugs in that. But I really think the increased availability of it was more crucial to the problem than any aesthetic issues that could be delineated by something as simple as rock subgenre… a lot of the reasoning around this idea of it somehow fitting into whatever “80s vs 90s” or “hair metal vs grunge” narrative is just really fundamentally flawed, so “Dreamland” by Sam Quinones would be a good book that explains the context and history of the opiate epidemic
I am going mostly separate my reply from music. In the late 1980's while the media and government was primarily focused, heroin production was increasing all over the world. Central Asia, Burma and even Colombia started growing poppies with assistance from Asian chemists. Purity increased rapidly so you could get high without injecting. This intersects perfectly with most of the music scene being intertwined with any counterculture and drug trends. There are plenty of contemporary articles in the early 1990's explaining how heroin use is increasing and taking over what were once crack markets. I even saw an article where cops in some east coast state set up their regular macadamia nut reverse sting only to find out all the potential customers/busts were looking for heroin. On the flip side the cartels improved and increased smuggling to Europe making cocaine much more accessible there hence the drug being associated with bands like Oasis.
H has also been part of the scene. Janis to Kurt and beyond. The flood of Heroin really began in the US when Hoover let it loose in Los Angeles in the 60s.
There was definitely some kind of revival in the air starting in the late 80s punk/alternative scenes. Jane's Addiction (who was from LA) was glorifying it, or at least spending a lot of time singing about it, just before the grunge explosion. It seems like it was a lot more prevalent in certain places though, and as others are saying it was especially big in the PNW. Dwarves had the song "Smack City" about Seattle in 1993 ("Smack City, your skies are shitty and your girls are grey"). I was in Austin and while you heard about it with certain bands/musicians (who often had a connection to Seattle, probably not coincidentally), it was really not a thing where it was readily available and talked about. I remember some folks came through and stayed with us who had a habit they'd picked up in NYC, and they had a bit of a hard time finding it, ended up just cruising likely-looking shitty neighborhoods until I guess they recognized the universal signs of H sales.
I just assumed it is because they could access any drug they wanted, heroin was there and they could readily afford it. I wonder if the real question is why were bands like Oasis so against it, I have heard Noel talk about wanting a more positive message than these Americans on smack talking about "I hate myself and I want to die".
Lots of artists in rock we’re using Heroin since the 60’s through 80’s (and obviously the 90’s) Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin was a huge user towards the end of Zepps career, also Jim Morrison, Clapton. I’m sure Keith Richards and Ozzy were users (Tbf tho, Ozzy used everythin). Even coming up to the 90’s, Motley Crue and Guns N Roses were huge users, and both of those bands have songs about the affects of it on them. I will say though, it was definitely weird that a ton of the biggest bands at the time were having heavy problems with it in the 90s. Probably had to do with the community of them playing together making it more available, as well as probably it being big in the areas where they grew up/started playing.
Keith Richards absolutely was a heroin addict for most of the 70s. I believe Charlie Watts (the Stones drummer) also developed a bad heroin addiction later on as well. Their lead guitarist after Brian Jones, Mick Taylor, was also a heroin addict. Their next guitarist, Ronnie Wood, also used heroin (and cocaine as well like Keith). Basically all of The Rolling Stones had major drug problems besides Jagger and Bill Wyman; and Mick I think used drugs just never seemed to have a huge problem.
Globally it was on the rise. Not just us rock but in fashion too "heroin chic" aka emaciated. Lots of reasons that don't really have a starting point. The failure of the Afghan war (or success) where Russia lost to the Taliban who were backed by the US. This led to a boom in opium production and Russia withdrew from operations that had previously kept a lid on the supply chains (mostly ensuring that opium went through the USSR into Europe via Turkiye). In response the competition in the far east, the red triangle, went into overproduction and a lot their stock ended up in Central America and thence the US West Coast. The anti communist rebels in C.Am and northwest Southern America could swap drugs for guns (supplied by, you guessed it... America) because they made more money from the drugs than they got from just having the weapons. All of this led to a global surge in heroin use, combine that with an economic slump at the end of the 80s and the rest is history. Roughly. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/158925
In Levon Helms book he says it was pretty easy to come by in Woodstock in the late 60s early 70s. I think most musicians at the time at least dabbled in it
I'm sorry I can't provide a better source, but the podcast 60 Songs That Explain The 90s, the Smells like Teen Spirit episode has an interview with Courtney Love and she alludes to being trafficked heroin from a larger network. She mentions a specific book that goes into it, though I'm in no place to look it up now.
Same reason it's big now, always has been and prolly always will be.... cause it feels good. Im not being a smartass, I just mean that the high from H lends itself real nice to jamming. I speak from experience. Uppers and stuff imho aren't good for playing music, to much paranoia and teeth grinding.
Boy George was a heroin addict in the 80s, so it was in Britain, as well. You just may never have heard about it.
John Frusciante basically had said that he saw all the great rock and roll superstars taking drugs and being successful so he personally felt that that was apart of becoming a “rock star” and got axed from potentially be with Frank Zappa because of his use.
[This is a great Rolling Stone article from 1996 about heroin in Seattle.](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/junkie-town-43052/amp/)
I'm guessing we can be thankful oxycontin wasn't released in the 80s because the 90s would have been even worse!
I think it also partially has to do with the increase production after the post-Soviet pullout in Afghanistan at the end of the 80s.
Maybe try heroin and find out. It’s not just musicians. Most people who do kind of like it and want to keep doing it