Why She, He And Everybody Got High
“I always compare her performance of that song with a great athlete hitting his peak — with Michael Jordan in the playoffs. It was the absolute pinnacle of what she could do, of what anyone could do — and then she had to keep on doing it. Everybody wanted to hear her sing that song, and so she sang it. It didn’t matter whether she had a cold, or wasn’t in good voice; she had to deliver it, and she had it arranged so she could deliver every last note. And even if the note wasn’t there, the feeling was. A lot of her songs were like that. They were a lot to deliver, but she delivered them every note, every time.”
– Robyn Crawford, long-time friend of Whitney Houston, telling Esquire Magazineabout what happened after the singer recorded “I Will Always Love You” for the soundtrack to “The Bodyguard”
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In the wake of Whitney Houston’s death much is being written about drug addiction, alcohol abuse and abusing prescription pills. It is known that Houston struggled with addiction issues and many hypothesize that these issues may have lead to her early death. The prevailing thought that I see over and over again regarding addiction is often related to why other people have become addicts (self-medicating for a mental illness, addiction runs in the family, taking drugs to “cope” with emotional pain, etc.) — but the theories people focus on are the ones routinely romanticized by the public and addicts alike.
Even though there’s hardly anything romantic about the ravages of addiction.
It doesn’t mean that people don’t self-medicate for mental illness (see Kurt Cobain), that addiction isn’t hereditary for some (see Drew Barrymore), and that people don’t take drugs to “cope” (see Lyndon B. Johnson, smoking himself to death after the end of his presidency out of guilt over Vietnam.) All that is very true. But some people are avoiding the reason become addicts, and it has little to do with your familial DNA or life tragedy.
It’s about life and how (for a while) substances make it easier.
Now before you think this is going to be one of those “being in entertainment means becoming an addict” essays, let’s strike that one from go. It doesn’t. Plenty of people go off to work in high pressure industries like entertainment or journalism and don’t end up looking at the bottom of a pill bottle to solve their problems. But there are many fields of work, including the media and entertainment, sports, interstate truck driving, hospital work, emergency services, the military, or being an airport traffic control operator — that might make you consider taking drugs to help you do your job.
Any job that requires you to be constantly alert or perform at a high level for extended periods of time with little sleep will create stress. It’s not uncommon for those dealing with that stress (and doing their best to continue to succeed at their jobs in spite of it) will start taking a combination of uppers and downers to “enhance” their work performance. Or unwind after work. Or just to feel normal. Or to keep them awake even though they’re exhausted and don’t know anymore what city they’re in today because all roads and all hotel rooms look the same.
This type of drug abuse is what befell singer/actress Judy Garland, whose mother was feeding her pills as a child. Pills to get up. Pills to go to sleep. Pills to give her high energy when she had none so she could be on time, do her job, be a delight to work with and make money.
The only problem with taking drugs to enhance your work is that there’s a fine line between this form of self-medication and abuse. What starts as popping a Xanax before a performance to calm potential stage fright, what began as a drink or two so you’d be in the mood to schmooze and “be fun” to the delight of co-workers, industry insiders and fans alike at the after party, becomes something you need to do just to do anything. And soon that turns into addiction. And soon the drugs that once helped you perform all night and do things people couldn’t believe you could do, turns into the thing that robs you of that talent, skill and ability.
Thanks you for your thoughts on this subject. Good article.
I’ve been coming to this site for a few weeks now and love it because of its perspective, but please take this constructive criticism:
Please have someone proof read the work instead of just using the spell-checker. Otherwise great ideas and observations are too-often underminded by unedited sentences here at Clutch.
This is a very good article. People forget that celebrities have demanding jobs with high expectations. We want them to sing perfect be perfect to help us cope through our problems with their music. But they are humans and don’t want to disappoint so by any means necessary they do what they have to do. If we could only find better coping methods for all.
I agree. The best article I’ve read on Whitney so far.
I completely agree. Very well-written and I commend the way she approached the subject from this angle.
Great article. I appreciate that you took a different approach to drug addiction as opposed to as you so eloquently put it the romanticized ideas of what we believe they stem from. I wish more artists and people in generally high-demand, fast-paced career s took time to take a breather. I hear Adele may possibly be taking 5 years off of music and I think that’s a good idea considering the issues she has been having with her throat and vocal chords. You have to always take care of yourself and health first. You can’t have a sound mind or soul without a sound and healthy body. We’re humans not superheroes.
http://www.ellecherieamour.wordpress.com
I hope I never get addicted to anything. For some people, it’s easy to look at others who are addicted and say “Oh, that’ll never be me. I’d never do that.” Truth is, you never know what you’d do if you ever got to that place where you were under a lot of stress, felt a lot of pain, or just needed a moment of escape. That’s why I say I just hope I never get addicted to anything, because anything can happen to anybody.
I like this piece because even though it uses Whitney and MJ as examples of people who needed a little something extra to keep it going, it recognizes that there are a lot of regular folks who need a little something extra in their day to day. According to the Centers for Disease Control Prescription drug abuse is the fastest growing drug problem in the United States. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6101a3.htm
Since 2003, more overdose deaths have involved opioid analgesics than heroin and cocaine combined. To echo the author’s view, many of the top performers in many professions are only able to operate with a little pick me up, which am generally overlooked because no one really cares just as long as they get it done. That old saying “Pressure can burst a pipe or pressure can make a diamond”, is very true and most of us are pipes, strong but still only pipes.
The unspoken dirty little secret that not many want to talk about is the scourge of prescription drugs. Many of which several times more powerful than any rock, snort or eight ball but is much more easily available with a physician script, especially if you have the income. They lock folks up for weed which is a pretty effective cure for anxiety but they prescribe them sedatives valium to help them relax. When was the last time anyone died as a result of a marijuana overdose?
I am not here to promote weed use but I ask the question because no one else seems to want to ever address it.
@ Rastaman,
Valid question. As far as I’m concerned, a lot of folks take weed not for medicinal purposes but for herbal purposes. Which gets them all addicted. It does too takes it toll-even though we don’t hear cases of overdose, death from it.