So many great and lesser known musicians have died from drug
overdoses or health problems brought about by drug abuse that it’s unnecessary to
name an example; you’ve already thought of one (if you haven’t, Kurt
Cobain). Since the beginning of the 20th
Century musicians have been linked in the public eye with drug use, starting
with jazz musicians and marijuana use.
In a 2012 study entitled “Sensation-seeking, performance genres and
substance use among musicians” Kathleen Miller and Brian Quigley set out
scientifically evaluate the links between musicians and drug use.
Although
drug use has been studied many times before within various musical scenes,
Miller and Quigley are some of the first to specifically focus on
musicians. The study gathered data from
226 musical performers aged 18 to 45.
This data set was further broken down into subsections for race, gender,
age group, and preferred genre of performance.
Each of these subsets was then cross-analyzed via complex statistical
means. Important to the study was also
identifying four categories of musical performance and the correlation between
musical styles and sensation-seeking behavior.
Miller and
Quigley are reluctant to draw too many conclusions from their results. However, their sample showed that musical
performers have a much higher rate of drug use (including alcohol, tobacco,
marijuana, and all other illicit drugs).
A full 50% of the musicians surveyed reported using marijuana at least
once a year, a considerably higher rate than that found in the general
population. The use of psychedelic drugs
in musicians was also much higher than the general population. Furthermore, there are strong correlations
for both drug use and sensation-seeking behavior in regards to certain genres
of music. Miller and Quigley do go so far
as to suggest that the same sensation-seeking personalities that lead to drug
use also affect the self-selection of musical genres musicians perform.
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