For When The Drugs Don't Work, Some Music That Will Help

The late, great Bill Hicks once said: 'if you don't believe drugs have done good things for us, do me a favour. Go home tonight. Take all your albums, all your tapes and all your CDs and burn them. 'Cause you know what, the musicians that made all that great music that's enhanced your lives throughout the years were rrreal ****ing high on drugs.'

I'm sure Pete Doherty, fined today for taking heroin into court, would agree.  On the off-chance that he hasn't already sold all his CDs to pay for class As and court costs, he won't be burning them.  His very public struggle with drugs is no doubt fraught with all of the genuine heartache faced by other, far less famous, addicts, but looming over it all must be the nightmare vision of what his life and music would be like without drugs.  It probably looks a lot like the video of Paul McCartney's Frog Chorus.

But never fear Pete, Hicks was only telling half the story.  His pointed, politically-motivated world view omits the bit where the very musicians he reveres take too many of the wrong drugs for too long, and their music ends up as depressing, bloated and shitty as Elvis found dead on the bog.  If you don't know what I mean, try and listen to Guns N' Roses' 'Use Your Illusion I & II' all the way through, or anything the Rolling Stones released in the 80s.  Feel like you need a drink... or something stronger?

The light at the end of the drugs tunnel is that even if it isn't common for artists to come back from the brink of addiction and make great music, it's still possible.  Although Doherty won't be keen to repeat Brian Wilson's exact route to recovery, the fact that the Beach Boy was able to repair his fragile psyche and put back together the pieces of his critically-acclaimed 'Smile' project should give him hope. 

And while it's probably nowhere near Pete's radar at the minute, Nine Inch Nails' 'With Teeth' should be prescribed as part of his musical rehab.  My personal favourite post-drug record may not be as obviously inspiring, with its bleak lyrics ('The more that we take / The paler we get / I can't remember what it is / We try to forget') laying bare Trent Reznor's addiction to heroin and cocaine, but the album's dénouement mirrors its author's victory over both drugs and critics who had doomed him to repeat the mongy despair of 'The Downward Spiral' until he met his predictably premature end.

If after all that Doherty is still echoing the “no, no, no” refrain of his fellow celebrity crackhead/mouse meddler/sometime singer Amy Winehouse, then it'll be time for some tough love. One playlist of straight edge hardcore later and he'll vow never to touch the stuff again. Send in Minor Threat!

Amy Winehouse, Pete Doherty, Elvis: Before And After Drugs