Patti Smith Helps Dispel Myth That Drug Use Causes Creativity

Thank you, Patti Smith! I was so pleased and touched to hear mega rocker Patti Smith acknowledge how worried she was for the late Amy Winehouse as she watched the extraordinary singer’s health decline. As the guest DJ on NPR’s latest All Songs Considered episode, Smith described the evolution of a tribute song to Winehouse. http://www.npr.org/2012/06/19/155291456/guest-dj-patti-smith “I loved her voice and I admired her work.  I felt concerned for her lifestyle from a distance – I felt extremely sad when she died.” The song, “This is the Girl” started out as a poem and appears on Smith’s new record, Banga.

Having a wild woman like Patti Smith express worry about excessive drinking and other drug use is as powerful as a man speaking out about sexism. She carries an enormous credibility and not many would argue with her. I grew up with a general awareness of Patti Smith, but I must confess I never paid particular attention to her. I guess I assumed she was a stoned out, heroin using Janis Joplin type until I read her fantastic book Just Kids. I am still embarrassed by how wrong I was about her. In Just Kids, which is mainly about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, she also talks about some dear friends and peers who were taken early or badly damaged by drugs – she is not moralistic about it, but she is straight forward about the losses and she herself was not and is not a regular drug user.

Countless students have insisted to me that drug use must have helped Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse. They say things like, “they needed those drug experiences to be able to write that far out music – it was worth it even if they died!” The fact that these talents died in their twenties doesn’t have the desired effect we adults would hope for. Teenagers don’t see 27 year-olds as being particularly young – they are 15 and don’t think they themselves are young! Some kids are truly convinced that drugs help rather than hinder creativity. It seems to me that famous folks like Ernest Hemingway, Judy Garland and John Belushi were remarkable despite their addictions. It also seems to escape adolescents that all of these folks were so desperately isolated at the end of their lives. Amy Winehouse was alone in her apartment when she drank herself to death. All of that fame and all of those people hanging around her couldn’t put a dent in her suffering. It is completely untrue that there is a higher rate of addiction in celebrities, we just hear all about it incessantly and it is rarely taken seriously as a health issue. Even Patti Smith referred to Amy Winehouse’s situation as a “lifestyle”, rather than an illness. Actually, people in the food preparation industry have the highest rates of substance abuse – anyone who has worked in a restaurant with a crazy alcoholic chef knows what I am talking about…

Someone Called My Name

Out of the anonymous clamor – the dazzling and disposable tweets, shares, posts and pics

Someone called my name

Like a letter, written by hand, actually meant for me

This was the message:

You were wild

You were beautiful

You thought you should be free.

 

I am still afraid of you

But I am glad you told me.

 

Headed for the Garden…

The summer begins and I will head into the garden to have a think for a while…This last school year was curious on many levels. I don’t have many valedictory thoughts, but there were some exciting, new experiences at schools I visited for the first time and wonderful, cozy residences at schools I have been going to since the 1900s. I had fun with the kids, as always. All the pot smoking amongst teens got me down, but I also met many kids who felt it was a potent, addictive drug that could throw you off the rails. Every time I asked a high school class to raise their hands if they knew someone who was addicted to marijuana almost every hand was up.  So much for the “pot isn’t addictive” myth. Teenagers really do bring me alive and can even cheer me up if I wake up feeling funky at the Hampton Inn in some far fetched city. I spent the month of March in California having fun fun, fun till daddy took the t-bird away – there were many weeks in Richmond, DC and Baltimore, as well as two weeks in London.  It was easier to bring my car down south and then fly home here and there for weekends.  18 weeks of travel in a row made it so I couldn’t always instantly recollect where I had been the week before or which airport’s long term parking lot my car was sitting in…For the first time in my career, I bought a plane ticket for the wrong day – then I had one of those lunatic conversations with US Air: “Madame, that will be a $75 change fee and a fare difference of $1865.00 – would you like to me to see what I have for Friday?” Oh, how icky. I feel like airlines are out to get you, rather than serve you, but that’s another blog post.

So, I do wonder if parents are getting loonier or if I am the weird one. It makes sense to me to supervise teens very closely, but some parents leave their kids home alone on weekends or don’t know where they are most of the time. Alcoholism is a pediatric illness, so postponing first use of alcohol is the safest way to prevent the disease – yet  some parents will insist kids need to “learn to drink” at home during high school so they can handle it in college. This gives me indigestion, as NO RESEARCH supports any of these theories, but they are widely practiced. It’s all a reminder that prevention really isn’t about youth. I saw a billboard that said Teen Drinking is a Parent Problem. Yup.

I visited a school in May that had just come through a really painful, but enlightening episode where many students were involved in an off campus drinking incident. After much drama and mayhem, a committee sat down and came up with the following findings and assumptions:

• Many parents can’t be trusted not to serve or condone alcohol consumption
• Some kids will drink no matter what, others won’t drink under any circumstances; a large group in the middle is malleable
• Disciplinary responses seem to be generating a lot of unproductive parent negativity and may on balance, be counter productive
• Having disciplinary responses to these situations actually serves as a deterrent to some parents and students
• Having disciplinary responses makes it clear where the school stands on the issue and may help some families manage their child’s behavior
• Dealing with these sorts of issues is a huge drain on resources: time, image, morale
• Efforts to influence parents are more effective than efforts to influence students
• Students will continue to drink

The last finding is depressing, but that is where that community landed after all of its tribulations. I would modify the last statement and say that those kids who drink do it ever more dangerously, but more and more kids are choosing an absolutely sober existence, so let’s find out what they are made of!