Answer Addiction

Tag: musicians and addiction

  • "Send Me A Friend" Program Helps Musicians Stay Sober

    "Send Me A Friend" Program Helps Musicians Stay Sober

    The program offers individualized peer support to musicians in need of a sober companion.

    The world of rock and roll is full of vices, and it’s hard for many musicians to stay sober. Send Me A Friend is a network of 3,000 musicians in recovery that help each other. 

    Send Me A Friend was created by singer-songwriter Anders Osborne, a well-known musician in New Orleans who became sober after hitting a personal bottom in 2009. If he didn’t clean up his act, he risked losing his wife, his home and bank account as well.

    With the help of Ivan Neville and Dr. John, Osborne got sober, then founded Send Me A Friend to help other musicians.

    How It Works

    When you contact Send Me A Friend, a volunteer musician in recovery keeps an eye on you as a sober companion. They stay with you, make sure you don’t use, and they help musicians hold it together when performance anxiety starts to creep in.

    Osborne recalled once performing on New Year’s Eve, one of the most dangerous nights for a person in recovery, and he had “friends” from Send Me A Friend to watch over him. While they sat there and kept an eye on Osborne, he recalled, “It was such tremendous help… It just was accountability. I knew people that knew I was trying to be sober and work, [who] sat there.”

    As Osborne told the Deseret News, “There’s a ton of anxiety usually, worry about people’s opinion, if they will enjoy or enjoyed the show. And you certainly need to focus and center your own energy, making sure you’re strong and confident, otherwise you won’t be of much use up there. Then after the show you need a little time to come down and ground yourself.”

    Hazards Of Touring

    One musician who toured with Osborne, Marc Broussard, said, “Being exposed to his protocols definitely opened my eyes about certain things that were going on in our camp… it’s not necessarily a business that makes staying sober very easy.”

    While Broussard admitted he is not totally sober, he’s now learned how to temper his drinking on the road. “There’s the sense now that if I’m buzzed at all when taking the stage, that I’m not being professional.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Raphael Saadiq Explains How His Brother's Addiction Inspired New Album

    Raphael Saadiq Explains How His Brother's Addiction Inspired New Album

    “The record is not really about just Jimmy Lee. It’s more about everybody has a Jimmy Lee in their life, you know? It’s universal,” Saadiq said about his new album.

    An NPR profile of singer/producer Raphael Saadiq looked at the painful family history that informed his new album, Jimmy Lee.

    The solo release—the first in eight years for the former Tony! Toni! Toné! frontman/bassist, who’s also produced songs for John Legend, Mary J. Blige and Solange Knowles—is a “little darker” than previous efforts, according to Saadiq, who drew from his brother’s life and death from a drug overdose in the 1990s for its title and lyrics.

    In the interview with NPR, Saadiq hoped that his brother’s story might resonate with others in similar situations.

    “The record is not really about just Jimmy Lee,” he said. “It’s more about everybody has a Jimmy Lee in their life, you know? It’s universal.”

    Family Trauma

    As a feature on Saadiq in the New York Times noted, his family life was marked by repeated tragedies: an older brother, Alvie Wiggins, was murdered in 1973 during an argument with a family member, while another brother, Desmond, took his own life in 1987 after battling drug dependency.

    The album’s namesake, Jimmy Lee Baker, succumbed to heroin addiction after contracting HIV, while Saadiq’s sister, Sarah, was killed when her vehicle came into the path of a police chase in 1991.

    Though the album is titled Jimmy Lee, the songs “are a reference to everything,” Saadiq told the New York Times, adding, “I couldn’t name it after all of them.” It’s also a departure of sorts from the polished soul and R&B that has defined his body of work as a band member, producer and solo artist. “It’s probably the most honest record I’ve made,” he explained. “A lot of it relates to me. It was like a mirror.”

    But in titling the record Jimmy Lee, whom Saadiq spent more time with as a child than some of his other siblings—his father, a former boxer and blues guitarist, had 14 children by various women, including Saadiq’s mother, Edith James—the singer found a reference point for addressing a wider canvas of issues, from his own childhood to addiction and the war on drugs.

    “When I came along, Jimmy was, well, he was pretty much an addict at that time,” Saadiq told NPR. “But being a kid, you don’t know what an addict is. So, I saw him as being pretty normal. I might have thought maybe he was an alcoholic or something… I didn’t know anything about heroin.”

    Prison Visits

    Saadiq’s experiences with his brother, which included frequent visits while he was behind bars (“I just thought we were going to Disneyland on a weekend,” he recalled), gave him perspective on the subject of addiction and the narcotics trade, and how it still impacts people like his brother. This record, said Saadiq, was his chance to give others the tools and information that his brother lacked—and in doing so, to help put to rest some of his memories of his brother’s difficult life.

    “I feel like people are not educated at a young age to know, like, ‘Okay, you have a choice to go behind bars and become a number and for somebody to to profit off you for free labor, and it’s enslaving your brain, your mind,’” he said. “It’s just taking so much away from you.”

    Jimmy Lee is available now from Columbia Records.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool" Connects Jim Crow Oppression to Davis' Heroin Addiction

    "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool" Connects Jim Crow Oppression to Davis' Heroin Addiction

    Miles Davis’ heroin addiction and alcoholism are all well known and well documented. However, Nelson frames this period as resulting from Davis’ return to a reality in which he was not wanted but his music was.

    The documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool opened up the world of one of the most innovative musicians in American history. In the film, Director Stanley Nelson laid bare all the details of the music man’s life, including the darkness and despair of Davis’s struggle with alcoholism and heroin addiction. It is during this piece of the film, which should have been the low and slow point, that the pieces Nelson offered began to connect. Davis’s heroin addiction was a direct result of the treatment he received as a black man living under Jim Crow laws in 1949.

    In the documentary, Nelson offers audiences the French tour where Miles Davis discovered love and existence without the restriction and oppression of Jim Crow America post-WWII. Davis went to France in 1949, touring with the Tadd Dameron group for quite some time. By all accounts—even those outside of Nelson’s documentary—the man became enamored with the country that embraced him for his talent without placing restrictions on him due to his skin color. Here he experienced life without the heavy hand of racism weighing him down.

    The freedom of living abroad was buoyed by a romance with a French singer named Juliette Gréco. The couple, despite their racial differences, was able to maintain a public relationship just like other couples in France and much of Europe. The oppressive, dangerously restrictive Jim Crow laws in the U.S. would have made their relationship illegal. American laws and policies in 1949 were enacted to maintain the belief that black people were inferior to their white countrymen.

    In Birth of the Cool, the narrator discusses how Davis became “disillusioned” by American racism after spending quite some time away in France. The weight of Jim Crow was enough to send the musician into a depression that he could not recover from. This was compounded by the lull in his musical career because of the waning popularity of bebop and the lack of a fresh new sound from Davis. He was also mulling the loss of the relationship that he would remember well into his later years. Davis told an interviewer that he never married Gréco because he loved her and wanted her to be happy. Their marriage could not exist in the U.S.

    The next part of the documentary was a slow plunge into the darkest parts of the musician’s life. Davis’s heroin addiction and alcohol abuse are all well known and well documented. However, Nelson frames this period as resulting from Davis’s return to a reality in which he was not wanted but his music was. Although Nelson never explicitly says so, the racism Davis experienced led to his depression, which sent him into the heroin addiction and alcoholism rabbit hole. Even in the documentary, Davis describes his depression as something that sprouted the moment he returned to the racist United States and followed him through the period of his life where he struggled with addiction.

    Studies like “Exploring the Link between Racial Discrimination and Substance Use: What Mediates? What Buffers?” from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology show that not only is there a relationship between racism and mental health issues as a whole, but the link also exists specifically between racism and addiction. The authors write, “Psychologists have known for some time about the pernicious effects that perceived racial discrimination can have on mental health.” The study goes on to dig into the research gathered from this link. They found that “[n]umerous correlational studies have documented relations between self-reports of discriminatory experiences and reports of distress, including anxiety and depression, as well as anger.” All of these elements were likely in place as Davis returned to the U.S. The weight of segregation, sundown laws, lynchings, and other trappings of Jim Crow laws was more than enough to anger and depress any black person at the time.

    Substance use promises an escape from pain and Davis needed a way to cope with all these feelings. According to the aforementioned study, “[T]he increased substance use we found was evidence of a coping style that includes use as a means of handling the stress of discrimination.” Davis probably became more angered and frustrated with the racist behavior (especially after returning home to the predominantly white St. Louis suburb his parents lived in). The documentary also described how his musical popularity waned and his personal life was disrupted from the breakup with Gréco. At the time, the musician’s life had all the elements in place to breed the raging heroin addiction that followed.

    Fortunately, Davis recovered from his addiction to opioids and alcohol, but it was a lifelong struggle. Nelson depicts as much in the documentary. In fact, racism and substance abuse become a very strong subplot to the documentary that works to educate viewers as much as entertain them. Between the scenes depicting the origins of the famous everchanging Miles Davis sound, Nelson buried important nuggets that should force us to redefine how we view and treat racism and addiction.

    Birth of the Cool essentially describes the environment from which Miles Davis’s addiction was created. There are other factors that also affected his addiction, but racism and depression were the primary and most powerful drivers that pushed him toward problematic substance use. Nelson thus lends one more voice to the chorus of stories that illustrate how racism and the oppression of white supremacy is an impetus to substance misuse and addiction. Acknowledging this can help with not only treating addiction in the black community, but also with understanding why racism should be considered a public health concern worthy of more serious attention.

    More info on Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool here.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Artists in Recovery Find Their Fix in "The Creative High"

    Artists in Recovery Find Their Fix in "The Creative High"

    Creativity — making art — is another way to find that aliveness and spiritual connection often sought through drugs and alcohol. The creative process can be transformative for people with addiction.

    Recovery that consists of meetings, step work, and an unfulfilling job makes for a very black-and-white life — at least for me it did. That wasn’t the recovery I wanted. I was bored. When I got involved in creative endeavors, however, it was like adding color back into my world. For some people, creative expression becomes a new high.

    As I started to explore creativity and art, I realized that I’d opened a door to a part of me that had been closed since I started using drugs. As a child, I loved painting and crafting. I reignited that passion and began expressing myself in new ways: blogging, writing and journaling; painting and drawing; making art and attending craft classes; and creating new recipes. My world feels so much more livable with art in it.

    I’m not alone, fellow creative Jules tells me: “Art is everything, really. I don’t care if you write, paint, dance, sculpt, make movies, or whatever. It’s a way to choose an expression to share who you were and who you’re becoming. We’re all messes of insecurity and works in progress. The key is to keep working.”

    A big stumbling block for many of us is that we don’t know where to start, and, like Jules says, we have insecurity about our work. That’s where artist Tammi Salas comes in. Over the past few years, Tammi has been sharing her creative journey in recovery. Through Instagram, the #RecoveryGalsArtExchange, her podcast The Unruffled, and other ventures, Tammi gives us a starting point and inspires us to play.

    “Art helped me fill the void alcohol once occupied. My entire recovery is centered around making and creating art,” she says. “Not a day goes by without me tapping into my creative groove and seeing what comes out. Art anchors me and helps me reframe old stories and visually create new ones.”

    San Francisco-based filmmaker, educator, and arts therapist Adriana Marchione finds her creative outlet in film. For the last 20 years, she has been dedicated to supporting people struggling with substance use disorder and other addictions. Recently, she directed a new a documentary feature-length film, The Creative High.

    The Creative High Footage Teaser, Spring 2018 from Adriana Marchione on Vimeo.

    The documentary shares the stories of working artists — including Wesley Geer of Rock to Recovery and Ralph Spight, a punk musician who plays with Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys — who have faced addiction. The film reveals their transformational paths to recovery, and the natural “high” of making art. The Creative High brings the viewer into the world of hip-hop, drag performance, punk music, dance, theater, and visual art, demonstrating “the tension that exists between the altered states of creativity and addictive behavior.”

    Andriana Marchione took some time out of her schedule to discuss her creative process with The Fix.

    The Fix: How has art and creativity influenced your own journey in recovery?

    Adriana: I came into recovery 25 years ago as a photographer/visual artist, and at that time I didn’t see a lot of creative role models in recovery. To be safe and away from triggers around my addiction that mainly stemmed from alcohol abuse and unhealthy relationships, I felt that I needed to move away from my creative life and artist connections. Life slowly became manageable. I started to heal, I found peace of mind, but I missed the excitement and vibrancy that my art making gave me. I found more internal ways to express myself (art journaling, poetry, small collages) versus making art to exhibit or be in environments where I mingled with other creatives and had to confront drinking and social life — galleries, parties, bars. This led me to study expressive arts therapy after several years into recovery, and then I made a career out of this. This has been incredibly rewarding to me, giving me a life of purpose, and also finding a focus where I specialize in working with addiction recovery, and artists who face addictions and eating disorders.

    Along the way, I have found new ways to express myself: improv performance, Argentine tango, being an art curator for many years, and coming back to my love of media through filmmaking over the last five years. It also took a while (and continues to challenge me) to find the balance with creating art and being public in art making, taking risks but still being grounded in recovery.

    What motivated you to create this film, and what does it represent to you?

    Being dedicated to a creative project of substance and collaborating with the film team has been one of my hopes and visions in recovery. For the last 25 years, I have focused on art therapy and supporting people one-on-one or in a teaching setting, but when I started making documentaries I felt a strong calling to tell stories and make a larger statement through my art. Films have the power to do that.

    My first documentary film, When the Fall Comes, was released in 2014 and was about my personal journey with grief and using the arts to heal. This film gave me the inspiration to do more films because I realized how many people a film can reach and what a rich experience it is to be involved in the making of a film. It is also a passion project since the topic of creativity and addiction is so close to my heart. This is something I have lived and watched others struggle with in my work — how to have a creative life successful in recovery. I wanted to tell the artist’s story from a new perspective, with many voices. I wanted to give hope to artists in recovery and artists who are still caught in addictive cycles, but I also wanted to show how the arts can be an important vehicle for healing in recovery.

    In what ways do you think the film will speak to both people in recovery and to those seeking it? 

    I hope this film will give people a window into the real challenges and successes that artists who have suffered from substance use disorders face. I also think it is important for people to speak publicly about their addictions, so the public can see that recovery happens and so that we can continue to combat stigma that comes along with the disease of addictions.

    Some of the artists in the film have had to go through a process with this, and I applaud their courage and willingness to reveal their stories with the public. I hope that people viewing the film will have a deeper sense of the highs and lows that accompany the creative process and take the risk to create. I also want to convey the fact that seeking an alternative “high” through making art gives another channel to find that aliveness and spiritual connection often sought through drugs and alcohol. Art can be the new medicine, one that is productive and meaningful rather than destructive and life-diminishing. 

    You chose nine working artists from diverse backgrounds to feature in the film, rather than choosing celebrities. What unique qualities do you think that will bring to the overall production?

    It felt very important to tell a different story than the celebrity story. So many films, TV shows, memoirs have been put out that tell the dramatic story of famous people struggling with addiction. Addiction affects us all in some way, and there are so many artists who live ordinary lives (and extraordinary as well) who are trying to be successful with their art without falling into addictive behaviors. Documenting a variety of stories, from musicians to dancers to visual artists, shows all different sides of life. We wanted to show many recovery perspectives and how each one is unique but they all experience the power of the arts practice. 

    Conceptualizing and producing a film is a huge task. What other challenges have you faced making a film that was funded through donations?

    Making a feature-length documentary is a huge feat that requires endless determination. We have been making The Creative High and are now in post-production, which is the most expensive part of making a film. We have pursued many avenues for funding including applying to grants, crowdfunding, reaching out to private foundations, and seeking investors, sponsors and executive producers. In general, funding is not easy to procure for independent films, and we have found that the most effective way to gather the funds has been through individuals making small donations that add up. We are very open at this completion stage to have sponsors and executive producers join us with larger donations to help us get to the finish line!

    Last, how can we support your fundraising?

    You can support our fundraising by making a donation here. The sooner we gather our remaining funding, the faster we can complete the film and get its message to the public. All donations are tax-deductible. 

    Find out more about director Adriana Marchione’s work: www.adrianamarchione.com

    How do you express yourself in recovery? Tell us below.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Dolores O’Riordan's Alcohol-Related Cause of Death Revealed

    Dolores O’Riordan's Alcohol-Related Cause of Death Revealed

    The Cranberries singer’s body was found in a London hotel in January. 

    The Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan had a blood alcohol level four times the legal driving limit at the time of her death, according to coroner’s inquest, AP News reports.

    A police officer reported to the inquest at Westminster Coroner’s Court that on January 15, O’Riordan, 46, was found in a London hotel submerged in a bathtub in her pajamas. There was no note and no evidence of any self-harm. As such, the AP states, the inquest determined that O’Riordan’s death was accidental and caused by alcohol consumption. 

    In Britain, inquests are usually held after a sudden, violent or unexplained death. The purpose, according to the AP, is to determine the facts of the circumstances surrounding the death. 

    In O’Riordan’s room, authorities discovered five mini alcohol bottles as well as a bottle of champagne. In addition to O’Riordan’s high blood alcohol content, “therapeutic” amounts of prescription medications were also found in her body, the AP states. 

    “There’s no evidence that this was anything other than an accident,” coroner Shirley Radcliffe stated.

    Prior to her drowning, O’Riordan had reportedly struggled with her physical and mental health. The AP reported that in 2017, the band had to end their world tour early due to her back issues.

    In interviews, she had also spoken about being sexually abused during her childhood, as well as struggling with depression and bipolar disorder. 

    After the iconic singer’s death, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar stated that “for anyone who grew up in Ireland in the 1990s, Dolores O’Riordan was the voice of a generation.”

    After the inquest, The Cranberries released a statement on Twitter. 

    “Today we continue to struggle to come to terms with what happened,” it read. “Our heartfelt condolences go out to Dolores’ children and family and our thoughts are with them today. Dolores will live on eternally in her music. To see how much of a positive impact she had on people’s lives has been a source of great comfort to us. We’d like to say thank you to all of our fans for the outpouring of messages and continued support during this very difficult time.”

    View the original article at thefix.com