Drugs & Drums

Jazz and dope often seem as closely linked as their jargon; e.g., the jazz terms "hip" and "hipster" are derived from opium smoking, during which the addict lies on one hip. Such famed hipsters as Gene Krupa, Thelonius Monk and the late Billie Holliday had their public problems with dope, and the jazz trade has long refused to book some big-name combos into cities where drugs are known to be hard to get. To find out just how far jazz and dope play hand in hand, Manhattan Psychologist Charles Winick interviewed 357 jazz musicians on the habits of some 2,000 fellow performers.

In Social Problems, Winick reports that 82% of the jazzmen tried marijuana at least once, 54% were occasional users and 23% were "regulars." Some 53% had tried heroin, 24% took it occasionally and 16% used it regularly. Winick found that often there was "positive social pressure" on jazz players to use drugs, cited one band in which only one member did not smoke "pot"--and he was called an addict by the narcotics users because he took Miltown. Among the "benefits" the users feel they get from dope: 1) "contact high," a sort of group excitement; 2) release from personal problems; and 3) a physical boost on road trips when they pull into a town after an all-day bus ride and have to play all evening. Said one player--who prefers drugs to alcohol: "If you drank feeling that tired, you'd fall on your face."

The vast majority taper off as they get older. Winick found that, of his subjects over 40, only two were still hooked on heroin. Explained one 43-year-old jazzman who had kicked the habit: "I guess I just diminuendoed out of it."

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