Musicians and drugs are nothing new, just as addiction is always there…hidden in shadows and back alleys, and since I’ve unknowlingly spent a fair amount of time talking about unwanted pregnancies I thought this time, I’d talk about something that goes hand in hand with living in the streets… addiction.
Thought as a side note, one of the hardest I’ve ever laughed was at a late night commercial for a restless leg medicine that gave the warning that if you found yourself unable to control yourself and saw an increase in gambling, drug addiction, or risky sex, you should stop taking and consult your doctor.
No, I don’t remember the name of the drug, but I do remember rolling off the couch laughing because you know, you may have lost the house and wife to your gambling and coke addiction, but atleast when you lay down in your cardboard box at night, your legs are silent.
Addiction is one more of those things that the average person and the culture at large likes to think of as a modern problem. Something that came about with the supposed crumbling of society.
How many would be shocked to find out that Shakespeare himself was likely a user of both cannabis and cocaine. To what extent, we don’t know, but excavations of his known residences and analysis of pipes found in miden piles lend evidence that someone around him in the time was smoking them. This is also supported by various references in his writings.
Here’s what I love about this little fact. Shakespeare has been set up for so long as that this epitome of culture and class. He’s the highbrow poshy of the poshiest.
Want to sound smart? Quote some Shakespeare. Yet, anyone who’s actually studied him knows he was merely a working-class actor who also had a skill with the pen. I actually think it was his working-class background, outside of the realm of the aristocracy that allowed him to be as creative with wordplay as he was. Now, to clarify, when I say working class, that looked a bit different than today. Today when we say working class, many think of blue-collar, and exclude the middle-and upper-middle classes, but class distinction then was very different than today.
The aristocracy that had power in the Early-Modern and Enlightenment periods thought anyone who had to work at all was mmmm… poor stock. In my opinion, that type of classist mentality is still at play in those theories that Shakespeare couldn’t have written Shakespeare because he wasn’t university or tutor educated. He didn’t travel the world, so how could he possibly write about far off places so well? How could he capture somewhere like Venice if he’d never been there?
The simple fact is, and any good writer will tell you this, quiet observation is a more powerful tool than many would realize, and Elizabethan England was a place ripe for inspiration. Between Marlow spying and dying and the tales incoming from the New World, a good sit in a pub would give plenty of inspiration. Not to mention the constant religious strife of a world in the midst of massive change. Not only was there the battle of Protestant vs Catholic, but the coming Enlightenment saw new discoveries in science and empirical thinking. In addition, the language itself was changing over to modern language.
These moments of drastic social and cultural change are hard to live through, and tumultuous af. Something I think we can all relate to, and why I thought…. Let’s talk about drugs, because sometimes when people get overwhelmed with the changes and uncertainties around them, they turn to anything that will take away just a bit of the pain. It’s called self-medicating and it’s at the root of almost all true addictions. For those of you unaware of how that works, imagine the worst toothache or bodily pain you’ve ever had, and how you were desperate for even the slightest relief in the pain.
For me it was a herniated disk in my lower spine when I was about 22 that had me practically bed-ridden for almost 2 months. Walking was tourture, and I was only able to do it with the assistace of crutches or a cane, but the movement from sitting to standing was the worst, and I avoided it at all cost.
It was also during this time that I realized I could not play around with opiates, because unlike others, they gave me energy and made me happy and social. In short, they made me feel too good, like I could concur the world. I’d seen how the addiction started in so many around me. They’d get an injury and prescription, and then still be with the pills long after.
And that… that is the root reason behind the songs we’re going to look at today. The kind of songs that warn of magic elixers that save you from all your problems
The First we’ll look at is Doctor DoGood’s Directions which is from the middle of the 1600s. This is the one that actually inspired this episode because it made me immediately think of Motley Crue’s Dr. Feelgood, because of course it did. Anyways, I present to you:
IF any are infected, give audience a while,
Such Physick Ile teach you, shal make you to smile,
It is wholsome and toothsome, and free from all guile,
Which shall breed good blood, and bad humors exile.
Although it may seeme most strange,
Yet this is most true and strange.
If any man be troubled with uncomely long hayre,
Which on his fooles forehead unseemly doth stare,
I have a medicine will cure him, to prove it I dare,
Let him take a Razor and shave his head bare,
And he shall be cured most strange,
O this is a wonderfull change.
If any be troubled with an idle drousie head,
Whose chiefest delight is to sleepe in his bed,
With glutting his stomack this folly first bred,
Let him fall to his worke, and be slenderly fed,
And he shall be cured most strange,
O this is most true and strange.
If any man be troubled with a very shallow brayne,
Whose giddy apprehension can no wisedom attaine,
If he will be eased of this kinde of paine,
Strong Beere and hot waters then let him refraine,
And he shall be cured most strange,
O this is most true and strange.
If any man be troubled with a fiery hot nose,
Which in midst of cold winter is as red as a Rose,
It proceeds from drinking old Sack, I suppose,
Small Beere and fayre water, let him drink none but those.
And he shall be cured most strange,
O this is most true and strange.
If any man be troubled with outragious teeth,
Which eat up his riches, and make him play the theef,
If he will be cured of this kinde of griefe,
Let him sow up his lips, and he shall finde releese,
And this is a cure most strange,
O this is most true and strange.
If a woman be troubled with a tatling tongue,
Whose too much vaine babling her neighbours doth wrong
I judge for her mouth its something too long,
Therefore she must cut short while she is yong,
And she shall be cured most strange,
O this is most true and strange.
If a man have light fingers that he cannot charme,
Which will pick mens pockets, and do such like harm,
He must be let bloud, in a scarfe beare his arme,
And drink the herbe Grace in a possit luke warme,
And he shall be cured most strange,
O this is most true and strange.
So, this song, unlike some of the others we’ll look at is the one one where you have the “just stop it” mentality that has long presided over not just drug addiction but mental illness. As someone who has panic attacks, the amount of times I’ve been told to just calm down makes my butthole clench.
If quitting an addiction, whether theft or food, or gambling, or gossiping, opiates or meth, were as simple as just not doing it… there’d be no problem.
People with addictions tend to fall into two categories in my experience. Those who refuse to admit they have any problem at all, and those that realize they have a problem, but need help to stop… because again, addiction is usually self-treatment of somekind of underlying mental health issue. Usually trauma. It’s why so many addicts come from addicts and poverty, and that cycle is one that takes immense amounts of inner strength and sacrifice to pull yourself out of. As someone who grew up around addicts, has lost a handful of family members to it, I’ll tell you now that pulling out of that cycle can take every last bit of energy you have.
So when condescending people act as though quitting an addiction is as simple as pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, it becomes just one more bucket of shit self-loathing pilled onto an already full pile of mental bullshit that started the damn addiction process in the beginning.
I do think that the addiction song has become more popular, especially in the southern gothic genre, which if you ask me is where the real ballad tradition is being continued. That and bluegrass of course, but the deep sorrowful notes and tones of southern gothic capture these stories so much more deeply than much of modern bluegrass. Just one person’s opinion of course.
While these songs of addiction seem to becoming more prevalent, they still aren’t anything new. I think a good transition is seen in the song “Cod Liver Oil” that was originally written by Newfoundlander Johnny Burker, but it would later be covered by The Dubliners, which is where I heard it first. I think it’s really interesting because it begins to hint at something that most people kind of know about, and that’s how many narcotics used to be present in what are sometimes called “snake oil” medicine. Coco-cola started out as a medicinal drink of wine and cocaine, and I still wonder if cocaine still isn’t in diet Coke because the way people get addicted to that is disturbing. Anyways, Cod liver oil itself is like one of the first daily vitamins, but I think this song is more abou those snake oil medicines, and let’s be honest, I don’t doubt there weren’t some who realized slipping some kind of opiate or other narcotic into cod liver oil. All it takes is a few shady pharmacists back then and you get an addiction as depicted in the song, and with that, let’s look at those lyrics.
I'm a young married man and I'm tired of life
Ten years I've been wed to a pale sickly wife
She's nothing to do, only sit there and cry
Praying and praying to God she would die
A friend of my own came to see me one day
He told me my wife, she was pining away
He afterwards told me that she would get strong
If I get a bottle from dear Dr John
Oh doctor, oh doctor, oh dear Dr John
Your cod liver oil is so pure and so strong
I'm afraid of my life, I'll go down in the soil
If me wife don't stop drinking your cod liver oil
I bought her a bottle, well just for to try
And the way that she drank it
You'd think she might die
I bought her another, it vanished the same
And then she got cod liver oil on the brain
I bought her another, she drank it no doubt
And then she began to get terrible stout
And when she got stout
Well of course she got strong
And I became jealous of dear Dr John
My house it resembles a great doctor's shop
It's covered in bottles from bottom to top
Well early the morning the kettle does boil
You would swear it was singing of cod liver oil
Oh doctor, oh doctor, oh dear Dr John
Your cod liver oil is so pure and so strong
I'm afraid of my life, I'll go down in the soil
If me wife don't stop drinking
Oh doctor, oh doctor, oh dear Dr John
Your cod liver oil is so pure and so strong
I'm afraid of my life, I'll go down in the soil
If me wife don't stop drinking your cod liver oil
I think the lines most telling in this are “so pure and so strong” and “I’m afraid of my life, I’ll go down in the soil”. So pure and so strong are words that saying it’s both concentrated and unadulterated, but cod’s liver oil barely would elicit the kind of addiction that would make a man fear he was going to die if his wife didn’t stop drinking. Which, in my mind brings to mind the images of detox and withdrawal that can and will scare the shit out of anyone not prepared for it.
Someone in the grip of withdrawal is possible of almost anything, and it’s definitely enough to make someone fear violence from their own wife. The lengths that someone will go to to stop the pain of withdrawal is one I think best captured by the artist Ian Noe, one of my new favorites, and his song “Methhead” which I think does an amazing job of capturing a site many here in the American south have become really familiar with.
It goes:
I saw him down in a dump
Hurlin' armloads of junk
Into a pickup bound for the yard
He was skittish and strange
Like a wild dog with mange
And there was blood where his veins ran hard
Wadin' deep through the grime
He found a long copper line
And he jumped up and leaped to the ground
And you'd thought he'd struck gold
The way he kicked and he rolled
And like a bandit he tore outta town
[Chorus]
Oh, now
He's out on the prowl
You'd better get up and go back inside
'Cause he's loose on the land
Gettin' all that he can
And there won't be nowhere to hide
Yeah, he's crawling his way
To that fix for the day
You won't stop him, he's bent to be fed
He's the low heathen kind
With a shit-mingled mind
The desperate fuckin' meth head
[Verse 2]
There was a girl, tall and thin
With scabbed yellow skin
Outside a rest stop I won't soon forget
She was digging at a rash
Trying to deal for some cash
Saying, "Baby, I'm clean and I'm wet"
I just kept pacing by
Swattin' through the flies
And her stench, rancid and stout
While she stood there cryin' "Please!"
With her fist between her knees
And the sores drainin' 'round her mouth
Oh, now
She's out on the prowl
You'd better get up and go back inside
'Cause she's loose on the land
Gettin' all that she can
And there won't be nowhere to hide
Yeah, she'll bum and she'll beg
And she'll gnaw at your leg
You can't kill her, she's already dead
She's the empty-eyed soul
The zombie-like fool
The fiendin' fuckin' meth head
[Verse 3]
It'll be dark pretty soon
They love to lurk by the moon
So I'm out back shovelin' the dirt
I'm gonna dig me a hole
As deep as I can go
And when they fall I'm gonna cover 'em up
[Chorus]
Oh, now
They're out on the prowl
You'd better get up and go back inside
'Cause they're sweeping the land
Gettin' all that they can
And there won't be nowhere to hide
They've got the taste on their tongues
Their fates have been hung
It's a fever that's already spread
From out far and wide
They're the fit-to-be-tied
The worthless fuckin' meth heads
Of course, as always, check the show notes to links to listen to the last two yourself, as well as links to additional readings on snake and cod-liver oil.
Most of all though, I leave you all to think about what your own addictions are, and what you would do if that one thing were taken away from you. How do you act when you can’t find your phone? More terrifying, how does a teen react when you take away theirs? Recently there was a leaked video of a teacher being beaten by a student after trying to take up their phone per school policy. Now imagine if you were actually physically dependent on that thing. To the point that not having it made you physically sick.
I’m going to stop myself here, and let that ruminate in your minds because this topic is so complicated, and was actually the first focus of my research… mental health and addiction in ballad literature, and I promise we’ll be coming back to it sooner than later, but until that time, stay saucy.
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