badbluesplayer Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 While the original act of taking the first sip or the first hit is free will, addiction isn't. Addiction is a chronic psychological disorder with physical manifestations. While I wouldn't liken it to cancer, it can be likened to diabetes. Both are chronic diseases with biochemical effects as well as physical effects. What a lot of people ignore in their judgement is that a lot of addicts are self medicating psychological diseases. A schizophrenic may abuse drugs to try to get rid of audio or visual hallucinations. A person with bipolar disorder may drink and abuse cocaine to "level" themselves out. A person suffering from PTSD may abuse drugs and/or alcohol to escape the pain of reliving their initial trauma. Are they really all weak or trying to cope (inappropriate as it may be) to the best of their ability? Sure, there are those who do drugs for "fun" and get caught up in them, but they are more the exception to the rule. Its easy for us all to say that addicts are just weak and have no will power or are just plain stupid, but none of us ever really fully goes on in one's life. Am I just a "sofa psychologist"? No, I have a degree in Mental Health and took classes that addressed addiction. I have dealt with families that have addicts as well while working with children. Whether you believe or not, addiction has biochemical roots, it affects the chemical balances in the brain and connections with neurons and synapses. If it were just a matter of will power, why the need for AA, NA and rehabilitation centers? Its like saying that all diabetics are diabetics because they eat too much sugar - its a blanket generality that prevents real understanding of something one doesn't understand. Now here's somebody who can discuss something without making it all about themselves!! Yay! Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karloff Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 Now here's somebody who can discuss something without making it all about themselves!! Yay! Thank you. I think Rose Maries post was great. and i wasnt planning on making anymore posts to this thread. It's a passionate subject because we all have either been that guy, know that guy, have lost that guy or are currently that guy. it's easy to make a blanket statement of " you chose to use, choose to quit". but its not that easy. like Rose Marie stated there are Psychological as well as physical factors involved. I'm not sure how anyone who has gone through this can give an opinion without "making it about themselves" to a degree. With that being said, I hope I'm not too guilty of it. I really like this forum, and I don't want to wear out my welcome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 While Rosemary makes good points, I'd add that most of the musicians I've known who had drug/alcohol problems in the '60s and '70s had begun with recreational "fun" use of whatever - and it became first a habit and then an addiction. I worked at one place where almost everybody drank what today would be considered incredible amounts of alcohol. There were bottles in desks and bottles in ladies' purses. I'd suggest somewhere around five of seven folks had a bottle in the workplace. That's well above what one might today consider an addiction rate. It was the era of the "two martini lunch," although that particular place, it was more likely to be bourbon for the guys and vodka for the girls. Frankly I found another job because I didn't want to grow into middle age drinking half a gallon or more booze a week which I was at the time; then didn't touch a drop for a year and, since it didn't bother me not to have the sauce, went to the occasional drink of stuff I liked the taste of, like a drop of Laphroaig. Then there was the really talented diabetic singer who dieted and did drugs - except his insulin properly because the other drugs convinced him he didn't really need to - who was dead by 30. I don't want to come across as the grouchy old man who has no compassion. But folks do themselves no good by shifting responsibility for their problems onto other people or their own genetics, whether they have severe psychophysical problems or not. In that sense the analogy to cancer is appropriate - if you are "in denial" and say I'm not going to go to the doctor and fight it, you're quite likely to die from it; and ditto drug and alcohol addiction. If you're so off kilter that you won't admit to a problem, cancer or addiction, society has the choice of forcing you into it, or in hoping you won't take others down with you as you slowly croak. I think too that Karloff hit the nail on the head in that personal experience is impossible to deny in one's own emotional take on this sorta thing whether it's of oneself or those we know. So... I don't personally think anybody who's opined on this is wearing out their welcome here. In fact, I think it's an issue we as musicians need to consider inside ourselves. In my old days, it first was the guy who hadda have a cupla-three drinks to play; in rock soon after it became a batch of mary jane or whatever. What if that guy is "me?" What does that perception do to "me?" What if "I" have a psychophysical predisposition with such chemistry to addiction? What are options? m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Versatile Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 Much wisdom and clear thinking in many of the afore-posts... A complex issue...and interesting to discuss in a level headed manner... As mentioned...many forum members have peripheral or personal experience of 'addiction' Which has many manifestations other than 'drug intake' IMO interesting questions arise from that grey area between 'recreational choice' and the sometimes desperate 'self medication' of the diagnosed or undiagnosed sick person...mentally or otherwise... This is the area where 'strength of character', genetic predisposition, self control, moral strength etc come into focus... V...(just off to do essential, non-addictive shopping...food etc :blink: ) Taxi...!! <_< Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 Versatile... Your note got me thinking on another aside... "Addiction." Nowadays folks might suggest "addiction" to television, internet forums, guitar playing, various sorts of game playing, etc. I dunno that I can quite go with that, and such "addictions" are far from anything new if one studies only a bit of history long before current technology. Are we, here, "addicted" to guitar playing and internet guitar forums? Or do we find them simply as personally pleasing as earlier generations found in other activities? If there be "addiction" involved, at what point? m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psychonaut69 Posted February 8, 2014 Share Posted February 8, 2014 I don't agree. I've had my mind opened. A lot of people have. All it takes is one time to blow the doors open. More than that and you have a problem. Uncle Ted is a loose cannon with anger management problems. Might want to pick a better spokesperson. Sounds like you might be confusing psychedelics with opiates based on what I'm reading. The big destroyer of all the great ones surely is heroin. Coltrane, Miles Davis, Jerry Garcia, etc to infinity and beyond all have heroin to blame for their demise. If I remember correctly Miles Davis or Roland Kirk once said that if there is something better than heroin God is keeping it for himself. Ted Nugent is a story all to himself and he's a legend in his own mind. I for one don't believe a word he says regarding his past. At a minimum I'd bet Ted at least either willingly or unwilingly ingested LSD when he was in the Amboy Dukes especially when they opened up for Jimi Hendrix. He likes to talk the talk being a fine, moral conservative but from what I read he sure used to like his women (I mean girls) young and **** his pants for the draft board to get out of going into the military. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted February 8, 2014 Share Posted February 8, 2014 When it comes to Nugent... I worked with him a but a cupla times and frankly due to the purpose, music wasn't brought up at all - although we did agree to disagree on preferences in sidearms. But his life and/or opinions are irrelevant to the subject at hand overall. At best, it's a distraction as well as "argumentum ad hominem" that has nothing to do with logical discussion. The bottom line on drugs is that there's a tendency among users to credit them with benefits of various sorts while those around them watch something else happening. The fact that many drug users also were very creative "artists" in many fields also to an extent brings the question whether they would have been equally creative without the drugs - in short, a question whether drugs make a person of lesser creativity more creative or if they simply change some creative directions due to combinations of lifestyle and numbing of one's mind. I think also we have in psychedelics a somewhat different question than in the sorts of drugs that are more physically addictive such as opiates and variations of "speed" including cocaine and meth, etc. I'd suggest that there have been plenty of non chemically-induced modes of investigating various sorts of alternative realities that are relatively quite safer. Again, zen, the practices of mystics for centuries in nearly every culture, are examples. I'm personally bothered by the concept that a pill or a shot or a drink of something can make you better than what you are either as an artist or overall as a human being. The difficulty is that drugs may be seen as offering a shortcut to cutting oneself loose from one paradigm of perception and performance and allow creation of another. Yet I've seen or heard no evidence that such might not be done without medication. I believe also at times in the past there were suggestions that the insanity stemming from tertiary syphilis might bring greater creativity and therefore was to be sought. As with perceptions of chemical use, that similarly was a shortened path for the artist... m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EVOL! Posted February 9, 2014 Share Posted February 9, 2014 Sounds like you might be confusing psychedelics with opiates based on what I'm reading. The big destroyer of all the great ones surely is heroin. Coltrane, Miles Davis, Jerry Garcia, etc to infinity and beyond all have heroin to blame for their demise. If I remember correctly Miles Davis or Roland Kirk once said that if there is something better than heroin God is keeping it for himself. Ted Nugent is a story all to himself and he's a legend in his own mind. I for one don't believe a word he says regarding his past. At a minimum I'd bet Ted at least either willingly or unwilingly ingested LSD when he was in the Amboy Dukes especially when they opened up for Jimi Hendrix. He likes to talk the talk being a fine, moral conservative but from what I read he sure used to like his women (I mean girls) young and **** his pants for the draft board to get out of going into the military. I am talking psychedelics. Only things coke or heroin ever opened up are bank accounts and coffins. btw that story of the Nuge crapping his pants was a big fat lie he told to High Times magazine. He dodged the draft the old fashioned way with a student deferment. He's a small man with a big mouth; talks and talks and talks. Only thing he ever delivers on is guitar playing. He should stick to that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RowdyMoon Posted February 9, 2014 Share Posted February 9, 2014 Last Sunday a casual acquaintance of mine ( went to high school together and new him since) died at the age of 48...organ failure due to years of alcohol abuse .....great guitar player and had several bands and worked 20 some odd years for a music store...drugs aren't the only thing that F you up, just might take a little longer is all....a shame, as I said I didn't know him well but well enough to know he was a nice guy and great talent....gone to soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevDavidLee Posted February 9, 2014 Share Posted February 9, 2014 I have an addiction........ to Gibson guitars. All of you people are enablers. \:D/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karloff Posted February 9, 2014 Share Posted February 9, 2014 I have an addiction........ to Gibson guitars. All of you people are enablers. \:D/ lol, ain't it the truth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charlie brown Posted February 9, 2014 Share Posted February 9, 2014 Yeah, we're enablers, and Gibson is the "Pusher!" CB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charlie brown Posted February 10, 2014 Share Posted February 10, 2014 Well, regardless...it's still a tragic loss, of a fine actor, IMHO. CB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badbluesplayer Posted March 8, 2014 Share Posted March 8, 2014 I went to jam with a band on Monday. One or more of the guys is a twelve stepper. The guy's messaging me ahead of time to try to find out if I'm a crackhead or alcoholic or whatever. He's like "We want somebody who has their life together." So right off the bat the guy's making his problem into my problem. So once I passed the substance abuse scrutiny, they asked my to come over and jam. I get there and these guys have "recovery" written all over them. Nice guys, but they're all smoking like three cigarettes at a time, in one gigantic plume of stinky putrid addiction, for the whole time. Nobody asked if it was o.k. to smoke. They weren't about to in a million years, because all their addictive energy has been redirected into cigarettes. I kicked cigarettes a long time ago so I don't get all tempted when somebody smokes. But I'm chuckling to myself the whole time about what a pain in the axx people are who are addicted and how they can be in recovery but they're still struggling with imposing their issues on others. Cigarettes'll kill you real good. How come everybody in "recovery" is always smoking like a chimney? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karloff Posted March 8, 2014 Share Posted March 8, 2014 dunno Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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