I was sitting in a room with about 25 people who were the cream of Chattanooga society when a tattooed, muscular, black man in a tank top walked in. He said, "When I looked in here and saw so many fine citizens of this town, I knew someone in here would give me a couple of bucks for a bottle of wine."
The place turned graveyard silent for a few moments. I opened my billfold and gave him two bucks, and he left.
One man said, "Why did you do that? You know he will spend it on wine."
All I could say was, "I like to think if an addiction had such a grip on me that I would have the 'galldacity' to walk in a place and ask total strangers for a bottle of wine, that someone there would have mercy on me. It must be a horrible thing to have that kind of addiction."
My lifetime nicotine addiction was enough to make me humble and keep me humble all the days of my life. When something no bigger than your little finger can boss you around and make you skip rope, you come to understand addiction.
A boy who once played in my band sat in his pickup truck one night and drank himself to death. When his sister looked in his Bible, he had written that he wanted me to be one of his pallbearers when he died. I think he knew he was going to drink himself to death sooner or later. It happened sooner than later.
I never did see this boy as unhappy. We were always laughing and having fun. He was a fine musician. I never heard him say one derogatory word about another human being. In fact when a preacher preached him right into Hades, I stood up at his graveside and said, "He never put down another person in all the years I knew him, and that's a lot more than I can say about most of the church people I have known."
No, he was not unhappy. He was extremely addicted. And I am so weary of going to the funerals of gifted people who let their addictions drag them into a ditch and laugh at them while they die like a runover dog. A few pitiful whimpers, and they are gone.
Addictions are an occupational hazard of musicians like black lung is to a coal miner, but one of the wealthiest men I have known got addicted to prescription drugs and wrapped his car around a tree, dying instantly. Watching addictions run through some of my band members over the years, I say that the worst addiction of all is prescription drugs. They seem so right because, after all, they come through a doctor. I have never seen a musician recover from a prescription drug addiction.
Why do I write all of this? Because I am sad today. I have lost so many dear friends to this monster that creeps up and slowly takes over the bodies and minds of good people.
I've often said that only two things can save anyone from an addiction: professional help or a profound spiritual experience. Find someone who has whipped it. You can get help if you will ask for it.
Email Dalton Roberts at DownhomeP@aol.com.