Drugs Sex and Fame

I wrote a column in June of 2004 with the same title as this one. Some recent events have caused me to revisit that column to update it, since they only tend to reinforce my words of wisdom from seven years ago.
Paul McCartney revealed way back then that he and John Lennon had done some of their best work while under the influence of drugs. That revelation made me wonder if there might be a connection between artistic genius and drug usage? I mean, after all, some of our most gifted entertainers of the past 100 years (Janice, Jimmie and Elvis) have died of drug overdoses. And then we have one of "The Beatles" confessing to doing drugs while practicing his craft. We have some pretty well documented cases here for the correlation between heavy usage and great talent.
Doesn't this send a wrong message to our kids? We're trying to get them to keep away from all those nasty things, and here is an icon, Paul McCartney, telling them that it's not only okay to do drugs, but it's actually beneficial and enhances their creativity. Wow, what a revelation that is! Well, there's more to the story than just that.
One of our former presidents, Bill Clinton, inadvertently sent us a different message that diddling interns also helps one to become great, and I suppose, leads to better decisions about world problems. The Clinton model, of course, doesn't conform to the above drug-greatness cycle, because he already told us that "...he didn't inhale." But after all, some of his momentous decisions were made in the oval office during reflective pauses with Monica—remember when he kept Arafat waiting in the Rose Garden while he and Monica got his head together? (Oops, that must have been a Freudian slip)
Then there are the legendary tales of Kennedy's exploits with Marilyn Monroe, and the rumors of secret romances between Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower and their respective female secretaries.
Even Bob Dole confessed for a commercial fee that he had problems in the bedroom; hence his failed run at the presidency and greatness.
I guess we can deduce that there is some convincing evidence that drugs and sex lead to greatness and fame. We even have a couple of more recent examples in Tiger Woods and Charlie Sheen.
In Sheen’s case, he not only achieved the acting pinnacle of getting $2 million per episode of his half-hour comedy TV show—doubling what Jerry Seinfeld is reputed to have earned—but he also calls into doubt that he is really “acting.” His character on the show is inseparable from his real life behavior. It isn’t acting if you’re just doing what you do naturally.
Now Tiger is another example altogether. Ever since his secret sex life went public after that episode with his ex-wife, his golf game has gone to the dogs. He hasn’t won a thing since then. I’m going to classify Woods a victim of “The Dole Syndrome.”
In order to further tie both drugs and sex into the formula for fame, I’m going to relate the brief histories of two on the Masters of Music, Ludwig von Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Together they prove my theory.
We all know that Beethoven became totally deaf in his later years. That was a great inconvenience to someone who made his living by producing beautiful sounds. It turns out that his deafness was caused by his frequent and constant use of drugs to alleviate pain, which has the regrettable side effect of causing hearing loss. We only know of this today, because a certain talk-show host has also lost his sense of hearing, and he also frequently used drugs as a painkiller. Unfortunately, there were no Cochlear ear transplants available in Beethoven's day, so he couldn't recover his hearing like the current guy did. I think we have to agree that use of drugs is partly the reason that LVB became so good at penning neat sonatas and symphonies and such.
Now, the other link, S-E-X, is a little harder to prove about Beethoven, but we do have the movie Amadeus to sort of put Mozart in the category with Clinton and Woods. Mozart sure seemed to do a lot of messing around with the women in between stanzas and notes. I'm going to make the quantum leap here and proclaim that, since Ludwig von Beethoven is recognized as one of the greatest in his field, it follows that he must have had a lot of sex in addition to his drug intake. It seems logical to me.
I know the bonds are tenuous to prove my case, but "Hey, give me some latitude here!" Remember, there are a lot of other folks out there writing whole books and producing docu-drama movies on more fragile threads than these. And we sure do believe all that is the gospel truth, don't we?
So there you have it. I apologize to all of you who are trying to stem the tide of addiction and promiscuity. The world needs creative geniuses more than it needs sober celibates. We cannot keep the secret bottled up any longer. The new motto for the up-and-coming impresarios and geniuses of tomorrow will be "Use it, or lose it" ...and you know what I mean.