, author Rachel Brodsky revisits Nicks\u2019 long battles with drug addiction, both illicit (cocaine) and prescribed (Klonopin).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\tThrough interviews and documentation, \u201cLesson Thirteen: Only You Can Save Yourself\u201d focuses on Nicks\u2019 cocaine addiction that stretched from the <\/em>Rumours victory lap to her own solo career in the mid-Eighties. Her bandmates and friends (including Tom Petty) encouraged the singer to go to rehab with her condition spiraling, which Nicks eventually did.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\tHowever, after conquering her battle with cocaine, it was a therapist \u2014 who Nicks later called \u201cDoctor Fuckhead\u201d \u2014 who got the singer hooked for eight numbing years on Klonopin, which left her artistically barren in the late Eighties and early Nineties. Breaking that benzo addiction, Nicks said, was even more difficult than shaking off cocaine.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\u201cThe truth about drugs is how they are usually a symptom of an even bigger problem\u2014in my case, an ego out of control,\u201d Nicks, now hard drug-free (but an occasional pot smoker), said.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\u201cStevie Nicks\u2019 addiction and recovery story is about a lot more than one person losing control and regaining it. It\u2019s a warning about the physically demanding nature of being a popular touring musician in the 1970s\/80s (or any era, really, including this one),\u201d Brodsky tells Rolling Stone. \u201cIt\u2019s a backwards look at how the medical community used to prescribe a wild amount of benzodiazepines to help their patients cope with anxiety and lessen their dependence on other substances. But it\u2019s also a story of Stevie\u2019s own ego death. In the nineties, after Stevie was finally completely clean, she could at last get back in touch with why, at the purest level, she\u2019d wanted to be a musician in the first place.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tLesson Thirteen: Only You Can Save Yourself<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tWriters do not thrive on drugs like Klonopin and Prozac. It takes your soul; it takes your creativity; it takes your love of running home at night and getting out a typewriter or getting out your paper and pencil and writing something that you love. It takes that away. You don\u2019t care anymore . . . And that\u2019s horrible to me. One of the few things that I\u2019ve never not done in my life is not care. And I didn\u2019t care for a long time.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u2014Stevie Nicks, CDNow, 2001<\/p>\n
\n\tThe hedonism of the 1960s and \u201970s can\u2019t be overstated. Drugs. Sex. Drugs before sex. Sex while doing drugs. As a child of the D.A.R.E. generation, I can\u2019t pretend to know much about it beyond what I\u2019ve seen in movies and read in archived interviews. My primary takeaway about the mind-bent sixties and seventies is that substances were so ubiquitous and free-flowing that they were just normal.<\/p>\n
\n\tFor Stevie Nicks, who came of age in the sixties and shot to rock stardom in the seventies \u2014 decades defined by endless partying with fountains of alcohol, strips of LSD, loopifying Quaaludes, magic mushrooms, and lines of cocaine, among other intoxicants \u2014 the singer fell right into the scene. She barely made it out alive.<\/p>\n
\n\tFamously, Stevie\u2019s substance of choice was cocaine, which flowed backstage along with champagne. Coke had an emboldening effect on Stevie, who appreciated the boost in courage as she stepped onstage to perform, participated in interviews, went in for costume fittings, and sought distraction from the growing isolation that comes with global fame \u2014 all the pressures that came along with her newfound rock star status. \u201cI used to carry a gram of cocaine in my boot at all times,\u201d she later told Oprah\u2019s Master Class. \u201cAnd it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up in the morning and the last thing I thought of before I went to bed.\u201d And speaking of going to bed, Stevie\u2019s purse was also allegedly full of tranquilizing pills like Quaaludes to help her catch a few hours\u2019 sleep before the circus started again.<\/p>\n\n\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tThough Stevie didn\u2019t indulge much prior to joining Fleetwood Mac, her recreational usage started increasing after she teamed up with the group. But her overreliance kicked into high gear as Fleetwood Mac\u2019s Rumours<\/em> took off. At one point, she was spending millions on the white powder, which was burning a literal hole in her nose. \u201cAll of us were drug addicts . . . but there was a point where I was the worst drug addict,\u201d Stevie told Rolling Stone<\/em> in 2015. \u201cI was a girl, I was fragile, and I was doing a lot of coke. And I had that hole in my nose. So it was dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tThough her substance use wouldn\u2019t reach the breaking point until the mid-eighties, Stevie experienced a flood of health issues and near misses well beforehand. Her consistent cocaine usage was influencing her already husky voice, deepening it to the point where one Rolling Stone<\/em> critic likened it to Linda Blair\u2019s demon-possessed snarl in The Exorcist<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\tOn the evening prior to the Rumours world tour, Fleetwood Mac received news that their album had just gone platinum. They were so elated that they took off partying in a blowout celebration that lasted almost two days. Stevie got so caught up in the madness that she forgot to take out her contact lenses, which damaged her corneas, nearly blinding her. The band\u2019s tour manager, John Courage, had to carry her out onto the stage on his back. She also had to avoid looking at the stage lights during performances. Soon, a doctor told her to bandage her eyes to let them heal so she wouldn\u2019t go blind.<\/p>\n
\n\tStevie has always claimed to have poor eyesight, but the contacts incident arguably made a bad situation worse. \u201cI got diagnosed with this thing a year and a half ago called wet macular degeneration, and it is not a good thing,\u201d Stevie told Rolling Stone<\/em> in 2024. (It should be said that AMD is a common age-related condition and is the leading cause of vision loss among people age fifty and older. Correlation doesn\u2019t equal causation, but Stevie\u2019s lifetime of eye issues probably didn\u2019t help.) \u201cI was seeing all these colors, big things of purple. I was having, like, acid trips. And I\u2019m going, \u2018I\u2019m not taking any acid, so I don\u2019t understand what this is.\u2019 Now, every six, seven, eight, nine weeks, I have to have a shot in each one of my eyes. That\u2019s going to be for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\tStevie\u2019s drug use also had a crippling effect on her romantic relationships, though she wasn\u2019t at all alone there. She and Mick fell into each other\u2019s arms through a mutual haze of alcohol and cocaine, and Stevie\u2019s earth-moving romance with Joe Walsh was famously unstable owing to the collective amount of substances both took in.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs the mid-eighties set in and Stevie readied her next solo album, Rock a Little<\/em>, the singer was visibly unwell. Keith Olsen, one of the album\u2019s producers, grew upset with Stevie because she was too high to sing in tune. After recording \u201cHas Anyone Ever Written Anything for You,\u201d he stormed out of the studio and quit on the spot. Jimmy Iovine, Stevie\u2019s Bella Donna<\/em> and The Wild Heart<\/em> producer (and a romantic partner), also walked out. Stevie also struggled to film the videos for the singles \u201cTalk to Me\u201d and \u201cI Can\u2019t Wait,\u201d which had her climbing and descending a staircase, which she almost fell down.<\/p>\n\n\tSpeaking of that experience, Stevie later said that while she loved \u201cI Can\u2019t Wait\u201d and its accompanying video, \u201cI look at my eyes, and I say to myself, \u2018Could you have laid off the pot, the coke, and the tequila for three days so you could have looked a little better? Because your eyes look like they\u2019re swimming.\u2019 It just makes me want to go back into that video and stab myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tOn the Rock a Little tour in 1986, Stevie\u2019s condition appeared more troubling than ever. Her performances were hit-or-miss; worst case, she\u2019d be slurring her words and literally falling offstage. Her nose bled often. Rumors abounded about the hole in her nose, how she\u2019d been inserting cocaine vaginally and anally.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen the tour reached Red Rocks Amphitheater near Denver, Colorado, Mick was there to join Stevie on percussion. But her haggard appearance frightened him so much that he took her aside for a heart-to-heart. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be like this,\u201d Mick recalled Stevie saying when he spoke to the author Stephen Davis during the writing of Gold Dust Woman. \u201cI don\u2019t want to need this stuff so much. I\u2019m going to do something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen the Rock a Little tour concluded and Stevie was back in Los Angeles, her team staged an intervention. It wasn\u2019t just the cocaine that had become a major problem \u2014 Stevie had been relying more and more on alcohol and various other methods of self-medication, including snorting aspirin dissolved in water to help with her migraines. \u201cI thought I was being the best, most hygienic nurse ever,\u201d she told Rolling Stone<\/em> in 2015. A doctor told her that the hole in her nasal cavity could cause a brain hemorrhage the next time she used. The longer Stevie went without getting help, the likelier it was that she\u2019d die. Friends even began to anticipate getting the dreaded phone call. \u201cI did all I could to talk her into getting some help and getting right,\u201d Tom Petty told Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cI was very worried about her. To the point that if the phone did ring and they said, \u2018Stevie died,\u2019 I wouldn\u2019t have been surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tAround this time, Stevie wrote \u201cMabel Normand,\u201d which chronicled her addiction and later found its release on 2014\u2019s 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault<\/em>. Named for the Hollywood actress who died of tuberculosis in 1930 after many years of cocaine and alcohol addiction, \u201cMabel Normand\u201d was Stevie\u2019s reflection on her own disease \u2014 and how close she came to death. \u201cIn 1985, I was dancing at the edge of danger myself, just like she was,\u201d Stevie told Out magazine. \u201cI was just doing so much coke. And it had already backfired on me completely. I saw this documentary, and I felt this union with her: Oh my God, the same thing that happened to this woman in the twenties is happening to me in the eighties \u2014 how can this be? Then she died, and that really scared me. She was rich, she was famous, she had everything. She had it all. And I very well could have died just as easily as she did. That\u2019s when I wrote the song. Less than a year later, I went to rehab at Betty Ford.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n