Musicians and Performance Enhancing Drugs

I am a baseball fan.  Grew up with it, and still have my first glove from way back in my childhood.  Having never played in college or professionally, I missed the first-hand accounts cropping up regarding “performance enhancing drugs,” but I know I wouldn’t have liked them around.  Competition is about being the best you can be, not trying to gain an edge  by taking steroids.  So, when talk about Barry Bonds’ home run record and the dreaded “asterisk” came up, I got to thinking...

Musicians are avid drug users.  Sure, not everyone who every picked up a trumpet or guitar shoots heroine, but a good many popular ones have.  Charlie Parker, famed alto saxophonist in the 1930s and 40s, continuously pawned his sax for drugs.  He also happened to be an amazing musician.  For years after his untimely death, jazzers shot heroine in hopes of playing like “Bird.”  Louis Armstrong before him smoked plenty of weed, as did many jazz musicians of his day.  In fact, a jazz concert was not complete if the musicians weren’t high; that’s just what they did.

Fast-forward to the 1960s and the Kool-Aid Experiments in San Francisco.  Would anyone seriously argue that the Grateful Dead would have been as influential without their psychadelic drug use?  Look at Led Zepplin; heroine and cocaine helped them get to where they landed.  Even today’s Green Day admits they are better high on something.

So as I was thinking, I could not help but wonder to what extent these drugs enhanced the band’s performance in the same way steroids does to athletes.  Is it fair that we force our clean high schoolers to compete with pot heads and dope fiends?  How is the playing field level if some out there are willing to risk their own life for the sake of fame?

Many of these bands are in the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame.  It seems maybe we should put an asterisk by their records to dissuade youngsters from following suit like we do with professional sports.  The goal is to teach our children, isn’t it?  I have the sinking feeling that such a mark is more likely to be a badge of honor for bands, so perhaps the whole idea should be scrapped...

[This post was originally published to my website jdduncanlaw.com on October 30, 2009.]

JD

John D. Duncan is president of J.D. Duncan, PC, founding partner of Prater, Duncan & Craig, LLC in Newnan, Georgia, and is Esquire by Day.  You can find him at www.jdduncanlaw.com, or follow him on twitter and Facebook.