JUST FOR TODAY: CREATIVITY NO EXCUSE FOR CHEMICAL DEPENDENCY

As a journalist who covers popular music and pop culture, I've watched with fascination over the past couple of years as more and more musicians go public on their battles with chemical dependency.

Granted, it isn't a new phenomenon -- when the members of Aerosmith decided to clean up in the mid-1980s, they set the benchmark for recovering rock stars by being willing to discuss their problems with drugs and alcohol.

Why is it musicians and artists seem marked by a predisposition for substance abuse? A lot of us like to use the excuse that because emotions resonate with us more deeply than they do most people, we need alcohol and drugs to dull the pain those negative emotions bring out.  Others of us like to think that drugs unlock doors of creativity that we can't otherwise access when we're substance-free.

I use the term "us" collectively, because I once felt the same way.  I always thought I wrote my best prose when I was wrecked, just like I'm sure many musicians feel like they write their best songs or play their best shows while they're under the influence.  Personally, I like author Stephen King's take on such thinking, from his 2000 memoir "On Writing":

"Substance-abusing writers are just substance abusers -- common garden-variety drunks and druggies, in other words.  Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving B.S.  Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jobs, but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we're puking in the gutter."

Incidentally, King has well-documented his own battles with alcohol and drugs.  He's not alone as a celebrity in the public eye: Lately, Kurt Cobain widow Courtney Love, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, Whitney Houston, Kelly Osbourne, Jo Dee Messina and Stone Temple Pilots/Velvet Revolver singer Scott Weiland have all battled addiction in the pages of various newspapers and on countless entertainment news shows.

This isn't really something new -- over the past 20 to 30 years, there have been many artists who disclosed their battles with chemical dependency - --Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Elton John, Ozzy Osbourne, Michael Jackson, Natalie Cole, Mary J.  Blige and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Anthony Kiedis, to name a few.  And there have been just as many stars who never made it to recovery -- Blind Melon's Shannon Hoon and Sublime's Brad Nowell, on back through the Doors' Jim Morrison, the Who's Keith Moon, the Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones.

As bad as addiction can be on everyone, the lifestyle of decadence, the money and the sycophants and fans willing to do anything for them make it twice as hard on celebrities.  Personally, I'm glad I hit my bottom as quickly and as hard as I did.  If I'd had the money and the access to drugs to keep going, I'd probably be dead.

The world of celebrities mirrors our own -- just as there are addicts and alcoholics in programs all over East Tennessee who get overconfident and fall off the wagon, there are just as many celebrities who do the same -- actors Edward Furlong and Brad Renfro and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee are a few whose names spring to mind.

And the ones who make it discover the same things about life that those of us in recovery know too -- that life, for all of its ups and downs, can be such a beautiful blessing without the haze of drugs to cloud our minds.  We don't need drugs to be creative, and we certainly don't need them to cope - -- all we need is a step in the right direction, a little 12-step recovery and support from our fellow addicts and alcoholics.

After that, it's just a matter of taking it one day at a time, and not getting high again, no matter what.