New at Reason: Nick Gillespie on Everybody Must Get Stoned: Rock Stars on Drugs, a new book by R.U. Sirius

May 13, 2009

In a review of Everybody Must Get Stoned: Rock Stars on Drugs that originally appeared in The New York Post, Nick Gillespie writes:

Thank God for Amy Winehouse. The British pop chanteuse has bucked the oppressively ubiquitous vision of the good life by declaring "rehab is a cop-out" and having a hit song on the same theme. To her unending personal chagrin (and the temporary benefit of her liver), the 25-year-old performer did eventually enter treatment for a spell.

Still, in a "Just Say No" age where athletes, actors, politicians, and other well-paid low-lifes are expected to be tee-totaling role models, musicians may be the last holdout. As R. U. Sirius (the nom de plume of Ken Goffman) writes in Everybody Must Get Stoned: Rock Stars on Drugs: "Trying to show a link between rock stars and drugs is like trying to make a link between mouths and tooth decay-too obvious to bother." In his new book, he documents the long-lived collaboration between peformers and all manner of mind-altering substances.

Read the whole piece here.