7 great musical artists who overcame heroin addiction

addictionfrontline
Apr 20, 2015
7 min read

Heroin addiction has historically plagued the minds of creative geniuses. But, not every heroin addiction story ends in tragedy. Despite personal confliction, these seven musical artists conquered their affliction.

The list order is based off the estimated amount of albums produced, according to discogs.com. Subjective and arbitrary order of musical talent depends on the minds of the readers.

7. David Mustaine

Album count: 19

The metal-revolutionizing guitarist toured rehab 17 times. In the earlier 80s, he played for Metallica for two years before the band kicked him out for excessive drunkenness – even by Metallica standards. Shortly afterwards, he started the band Megadeth.

In 2002, while in a detox waiting room, he suffered nerve damage in his hand after nodding off in a chair. Eventually, Mustaine regained control of his hand. He returned to the studio, became clean, converted to Christianity and hired a spiritual counselor to accompany him on tour.

“It wasn’t long afterward that I fell to my knees and said all the prayers and accepted Jesus Christ into my life,” Mustaine wrote in his autobiography, Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir. “For me, only one thing worked: establishing a relationship with God. That changed everything.”

In 2009, Joel Mclver declared Mustaine as number one in his book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists.

6. Steven Tyler

Album count: 27

The Aerosmith lead singer – and Rock and Rock Hall of Famer ̶ spent $6 million on drugs and alcohol, according to an interview with the Australian 60 Minutes.

“I snorted my Porsche, I snorted my plane, I snorted my house in that din of drugs and booze and being lost,” Tyler wrote in his autobiography Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?

Aerosmith enjoyed its first peak during the mid-70s until Tyler’s addiction pushed members into quitting. His talent began to suffer. He placed himself into rehab. In the mid-80s, Tyler cleaned up and returned to a new generation of music lovers ̶ the emerging MTV generation. Eventually, he remained sober for 12 years, until foot surgery in 2006.

In 2009, Tyler entered rehab for the eighth time.

In October 2014, Tyler spoke to a group of Maui Drug Court graduates. “If it wasn’t for AA, I would have nothing,” he said to the group. “I’m a better drug addict and alcoholic than I am a musician. I got to keep in check.”

5. Etta James

Album count: 43

Born Jamesetta Hawkins, the exquisitely soulful genius transformed blues into rock-n-roll. James had gained popularity in the gospel music scene, at five-years-old. During her childhood, she was bounced between her mother's care and a foster family.

Throughout the 50s, James and the Creolettes toured with Little Richard. During the 60s, 70s and 80s, James’ sultry voice earned her title: “The Queen of Soul” - also the name of her sixth album. The decades rolled on through success, rehabs, homelessness, jail and a nagging heroin addiction taunted from the anguish of her traumatic childhood.

"It took a good-hearted judge to make me stop and examine myself,” James wrote, in her autobiography Rage to Survive. “I was too stubborn, too willful, too hooked on junk to make the decision on my own. It didn't take a genius to understand how badly I needed therapy.”

She kicked heroin in the 70s, but replaced it with cocaine. In the late 80s, she attained sobriety, at the age of 50. She continued to record until 2011. Sadly, leukemia would eventually claim her life on January 20, 2012.

She said her song “Feeling Uneasy” captures her rock bottom. Although the song's only coherent lyrics surface at the end, the tone and agonizing moans emulate dispair.

"I've gone through so much in my life," James said in an interview with Ebony, in 2003. "I should have been dead a long time ago, but I am still here, and I am the happiest I've ever been."

4. Eric Clapton

Album count: 51

At eight-years-old, the British songwriter - with the soul of an American bluesman – endured the heartache of learning his sister was actually his mother who surrendered parental responsibility to his grandparents. He sought refuge in both the guitar and addiction.

After his album Layla – a proclamation of love for George Harrison’s wife – commercially flopped, Clapton drowned himself into heroin. He eventual quit dope for alcoholism. Eventually, he married Pattie Boyd (Harrison’s ex-wife), but impregnated two other women outside of the marriage. His son, Conor, fell out of a window, tragically claiming the five-year-old boy’s life. Clapton’s anguish lead to the song "Tears in Heaven."

"He then fell 49 floors before landing on the roof of an adjacent four-story building," Clapton wrote, in his autobiography Salvation Road.

"A woman came up to me after the meeting and said, 'You’ve just taken away my last excuse to have a drink.' I asked her what she meant. She said, 'I’ve always had this little corner of my mind which held the excuse that, if anything were to happen to my kids, then I’d be justified in getting drunk. You’ve shown me that’s not true.' I was suddenly aware that maybe I had found a way to turn this dreadful tragedy into something positive. I really was in the position to say, 'Well, if I can go through this and stay sober, then anyone can.' There was no better way to honor the memory of my son." exert from Salvation Road.

In 1987, Clapton finally managed to achieve sobriety. He remains clean today. He founded the International Centre for Healing, Crossroads Centre Antigua – an addiction treatment center in the Caribbean.

3. Ronnie Wood Album count: 52 (Rolling Stones)

The versatile Gypsy genius played for The Birds, the Jeff Beck Group and the Faces before joining The Rolling Stones in 1975. Wood sought addiction treatment eight times.

Wood started drinking brandy and whisky, at 14-years-old. Through four decades, he did not play a single show with a sober brain. Despite numerous attempts at rehab, Wood continued to spiral out of control until British artist Damien Hirst performed an intervention in 2010.

“Something had to change, so I went back to rehab,” Wood said in an interview to the Sunday Times. “Next year will be my fifth year of recovery. I'm really enjoying it, too.”

Today, Wood focuses on fatherhood, a new marriage, recovery meetings, a radio show, his painting career and, of course, music.

"It's some kind of magic, the reassurance of the clarity that I now have," he said, in an interview with Rolling Stone. "I find that I'm playing far less now, but the stuff that I do play has far more meaning.”

2. Ray Charles

Album count: 139

Ray Charles Robinson’s approach to music demonstrated the mind of a genius – and the torture inflicted from insanity. The grandmaster of the American sound uniquely fused gospel and blues into soul music, earning the title of the “Father of Soul.”

At five-years-old, Charles helplessly watched his brother drowned to death in a bathtub. The horrific scene haunted him for decades.

A few years later, his eye sight completely succumb to glycoma. At 15-years-old, Charles had lost his parents and his brother. Despite becoming a blind orphan, Charles continued to write and compose music in braille at St. Augustine’s Florida State School for the Deaf and Blind.

At 16-years-old, Charles started touring around with several bands and discovered heroin. Throughout the decades of addiction, he fathered 12 children with nine different women and accumulated two ex-wives. His genius fueled both his success and his addiction. His flaring temperament complicated his business relationships, but people tolerated his addictive behavior because his musical I.Q. proved uncanny.

In 1964, Ray Charles walked into St. Francis Hospital, in California.

“I vomited and vomited and vomited to the was nothing left the vomit,” Ray Charles wrote, in his autobiography Brother Ray. “And then I vomited some more. I was heaving up poison. The poison which was heroin, the poison my body was now naturally rejecting.”

After 96 hours of withdrawal, he kicked his heroin habit for good.

“From that day on, I have never fucked with heroin," he wrote.

In 1986, he started The Ray Charles Foundation, donating money to blind and deaf research institutions, handicap healthcare for the needy, music education and youth empowerment. Charles continued to record until his final days. His last album Genius Loves Company was released two months after he passed away from liver disease on June 10, 2004.

Charles always stressed “There is no challenge too great one cannot overcome.”

1. Miles Davis

Album count: 150

Miles Dewey Davis III’s energy exploded into jazz, painting, fashion, rock, sex and drug addiction. A master of reinvention, he invented fusion jazz. Hell, Miles invented cool.

At age 13, he picked up the trumpet and played for the next five decades. Mile’s craving for new experiences pushed him to reinvent and merge jazz with rock, flamenco and Arab music. He transformed be-bop into cool jazz – before birthing jazz-rock and jazz-funk.

“I always manage to try something I can’t do,” Davis said, on the Sketches of Spain linear notes. “I’m going to call myself on the phone one day and tell myself to shut up.”

His own genius tormented him. Like a singularity, Davis could shine brilliant or implode on himself into a vacuum, an excruciating void he exhaustedly tried to fill with cocaine, heroin and alcohol. After numerous tries, Davis beat heroin addiction in 1954. He would beat his cocaine addiction in 1979. Painting became his final addiction until his death from pneumonia, in 1991.

In 2009, Congress passed a bill honoring “Kind of Blue” as a national treasure.

Through the eyes of a high-functioning addict, the average mind seems to lack motivation. A genuis' mind never rests. Compulsion and the need for novel experiences fuel the drive for perfection and innovation. Drowning in despair from the disease of addiction, these seven artists gave their best work to the world.

Addiction can both curse and bless a person.