Are steroids the same as booze/drugs for musicians/actors?

[tjdee]

So if all these ball players should be punished for using steroids to enhance their playing, what about all the musicians who shot up/drank themselves to inspiration? Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, etc.....

Is it the same thing? I tend to think not....because they did steroids specifically to be enhanced physically (as opposed to tokin' for kicks). Not to mention, alcohol is legal (another debate, LOL).

But what do y'all think?

Thanks to....don't remember, who linked to that free will astrology place, made me think. :)

[aden_nak]

1. I would say no, because there is no DIRECT link.

I mean, if you use steroids, you will see a guaranteed increase in overall strength and muscle mass. It's a direct cause/effect relationship. On the other hand, while some people might say that they write better music or lyrics while high or drunk, there is no direct cause/effect relationship. If I write a song while sober, no one is going to say, "It was good, but it would have been a far better song if he'd been high."

[Lexingtonian]

2. not as I see it

Baseball is a game for 8 to 12 year old little boys, really. Adult and pro baseball works as long as the paying audience believes it has a connection to that experience; it's a pretty dreary and silly game when the nostalgia element gets lost. Steriods is one of the things that could break that connection, that could truly poison the bargain between pro baseball and its audience to ignore or discount in public certain realities of the business (e.g. the money).

Drugs and art...artists are just a different species of humanity from the bourgeouis rest of us. They don't understand the world in the way most of us do, given at bottom as they must be to fancy and imagination and select pieces of reality to a degree or seriousness that seems unaffordable to others. Artists simply have a hard time conforming to the rules and reasons of the socially conventional, for better or for worse. Drugs are part of the currency in the running and neverending conflict with conventionality.