Heroin in popular culture

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Heroin began to appear as a cultural artifact within a few years of its discovery in 1874. Since then it has come to occupy a paradoxical cultural position, being both demonised and glamorised, often in the same text.

There are clear precursors to heroin's present cultural role in the late 18th and 19th centuries, notably in works like Thomas de Quincey's autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. The 1822 account of de Quincey's addiction to opium was one of the first published narratives of drug addiction. The Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (published from 1891 to 1927) describe the famous detective's use of another opiate, morphine, as well as the stimulant drug cocaine. [1] [2]

The rigorously negative portrayal of heroin use has become a precept for United States law and drug enforcement agencies, and the U.S. has exerted considerable pressure on other nations to follow suit. But despite governments' efforts both to portray heroin as totally destructive, and to apprise the public of its very real dangers, heroin has acquired a powerful mystique.

Heroin has long been closely linked with music and the music industry. It first emerged as a major social problem after World War II when it began to cut a swathe through the jazz world. Many leading musicians — particularly those belonging to the bebop school — became addicts, and the image of the junkie jazz musician was soon elevated to the level of archetype by newspaper reports and movies like The Man with the Golden Arm.

Marijuana had been a popular recreational drug with jazz musicians for some decades, and it is possible that this cannabis subculture predisposed users to trying heroin, but the most likely explanation is one relating to milieu: it was arguably the emergence of Mafia-run drug rings, which appeared concurrently with the infiltration of organised crime into the music industry, that placed heroin within reach of vulnerable performers, and there is little doubt that dealers and mobsters actively exploited the plight of these musicians in order to glamorise the drug.

Saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianist Thelonious Monk, and singer Billie Holiday were all the subjects of highly publicised drug busts, with Holiday spending eight months in jail at the height of her career. Holiday and Parker (or at least the cult that grew up around them) have been blamed for glamorising the drug, and Bird disciples Miles Davis and John Coltrane both became celebrity addicts, as did many of their contemporaries, including singer Anita O'Day. Just around the start of the rock era in the mid-Sixties, the overdose death of iconoclastic satirist Lenny Bruce generated lurid headlines around the world. For much of his early career, Ray Charles was also a heavy heroin user (an addiction that was a focal point of the biopic Ray) until he was arrested for possession in 1965 and went into rehab.

Due to their close connections with the jazz scene, many writers of the so-called Beat Movement also experimented with or used heroin. The most notable was undoubtedly William S. Burroughs, who wrote extensively about the drug in his books and The Poets' Encyclopedia; Burroughs and Gregory Corso were regular users for many years.

Thanks to its strong foothold in jazz, heroin quickly penetrated the emerging rock music scene in the late 1960s. Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones is probably the best-known rock junkie, and he was an addict for most of the 1970s. He was probably introduced to the drug by the band's friend and associate, art dealer Robert Fraser, who was using heroin regularly by the mid-Sixties. Richards, who eventually kicked the drug, arguably inherited the heroin glamour that had surrounded Charlie Parker, and his addiction was heavily romanticized by the rock press.

The Lou Reed song "Heroin", first recorded and performed by The Velvet Underground in 1967, marked one of the first attempts to explore heroin use in the rock idiom, and heroin and the culture surrounding its use featured in many of Reed's songs. However, performers in the folk genre had already been writing and singing about it for several years by the time it emerged as subject matter in the rock genre.

Although it was less publicly influential than their use of cannabis and LSD, heroin also featured in the story of The Beatles. The name "Henry the Horse" in the song "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite" (1967) is reputed to refer to heroin, and the song "Happiness is a warm gun" is also alleged to contain coded references to it. In 1970, John Lennon admitted that he and Yoko Ono had used heroin during the latter days of the group's career, around the time of their drug busts and Ono's subsequent miscarriage. Lennon said in 1972 that the claim that Henry the Horse meant heroin was "rubbish."

At the turn of the 1970s, heroin was implicated in the death of two of the major rock stars of the day — singer Janis Joplin and Doors frontman Jim Morrison. However, Morrison's death is highly controversial, and the allegation of heroin overdose lacks credibility due to Morrison's outspoken distaste for the drug. In addition, a post-mortem examination was not performed on Morrison, leaving his cause of death completely speculative. Guitar legend Jimi Hendrix was also charged with possession not long before his death. The history of rock culture in the 1970s and beyond has been littered with celebrity junkies and OD victims, including Free guitarist Paul Kossoff, Dr John (a longtime addict) and singer-songwriters Tim Hardin and Tim Buckley, both of whom also died of overdoses. In a deep depression during the early 1970s and suffering a serious addiction, rock legend Eric Clapton was spending £1,000 per week on heroin. Jerry Garcia was a long-time heroin user although ultimately heart disease caused his death in a rehab center. Singer Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy fame was a frequent user of the drug in the late 70's and early 80's, and suffered an overdose of the drug in 1986. The drug was also a fixture among many notables in the 1970s and 1980s metal scene, such as Mötley Crüe and members of Guns N' Roses whose song "Mr. Brownstone" detailed their addiction. Heroin was also heavily associated with the growing industrial music scene in the late 1970s and 1980s, being the drug of choice for many industrial acts.

Heroin use has continued to exert a hold over the entertainment world, with recent celebrity addicts including singer Boy George and actor Robert Downey Jr. Overdose fatalities also continue, such as the widely reported death of actor River Phoenix, as well as the death of Bradley Nowell, the lead singer of the band Sublime. Layne Staley, the lead singer of the grunge band Alice in Chains, was discovered in his apartment dead of an apparent overdose of cocaine and heroin. The band had written many songs about the addiction, use, and sale of heroin, including "Would?", a song written about Andrew Wood, the lead singer of Mother Love Bone who had died of a heroin overdose in 1990. The addiction of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain, who died in 1994, was also the subject of extensive media coverage. Most recently, singer-songwriter Elliott Smith had struggled for years with the drug before his death in 2003. Both Cobain and Smith are thought to have committed suicide, although the veracity of the suicide claim in both cases is mildly disputed.

Heroin consumption and addiction has been featured in numerous works of art, ranging from songs and films to novels.

Amongst these are:

Contents

[edit] Novels

[edit] Factual accounts

[edit] Films

[edit] Songs

[edit] Celebrities who died of heroin overdoses

[edit] Clinically died but were later revived

[edit] Blogs about Heroin

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