Collecting posters of Brad Pitt and scrapbooks about Princess Di is one thing and admiring to stars like Jimmy Hendrix, Bob Marley or River Phoenix is something else, according to the Susan Boon, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Calgary.

Are teens and people in general going to be negatively influenced by celebrities? It’s hard for me to understand that someone is ready to take marijuana just because her/his idol had.  What do you think, is there a link there?

Hendrix used marijuana. Janice also. Stevie Ray and Jim Morrison were enjoying marijuana as well.
Virtually every great personification in music (at least in our lifetime), had some kind of drugs, like marijuana to pull off that creative genius.

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Of course we all reluctantly agree that it had some profound effects on our music and some devastatingly negative effects as well.

Alcohol too! Like Hank Sr/Jr., and almost any famous group or performer you’d like to recall.
Aerosmith, the Stones, and countless others come to mind; when thinking about the living.
We are fortunate to have with us still those who overcame them, and at the same time feeling cheated out of the many years of great music by those that weren’t able to cheat death.

How do you feel about your favorite band or artist, and their drug/alcohol death that cheated us out of, and/or created the sounds that we love/hate?

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How do you feel about the artists/groups that overcame the obstacle and went on to really create something great in the ways of music?

I believe that people are either creative or not. There’s no drug that will make an athlete out of one who is uncoordinated. No drug that will make a dullard into a poet. Any sense of being "better" while taking a drug is purely psychological.

Reminds me of the wizard of oz and America:

"Oz never did give anything to the tin man that he didn’t already have."

The paradox is, the creative ones that use drugs are usually/mostly the very ones that have addictive personalities. They never truly needed a drug to make them write that perfect song, but, the drug enhanced them possibly to write it sooner.

Just like the person that smokes marijuana. Marijuana IMO is the safest drug there is with many medicinal properties. Yet it’s a drug. A person does become psychologically addicted to it because those that smoke it will, say, fire up a joint before they play that new CD they just bought. Now they actually think they can’t enjoy something without first using a drug.

 

Rock stars, poets, scientists, philosophers and any of the creative categories all fall under the possibility of drug use. I myself am happy we had them and do hope the final door they opened is the one they truly want to walk through.

Our brain is the best drug in the world. It doesn’t need to be laminated.

What’s your opinion on this?