The 1989 song that got Stevie Nicks through rehab: “I thought I was dying”
Cocaine ripped through Fleetwood Mac like a blizzard. What started out as a bit of recreational fun turned into an addiction that was almost fatal for Stevie Nicks.
By the mid-1980s, the singer was told that one more night on the gear could be her last as the damage she’d done to her body was severe. So she checked herself into rehab and held onto one song for comfort.
At one point, all the members of Fleetwood Mac were getting on it. The band rarely stepped on stage during the 1970s and early ‘80s without a bump of coke, as the presence of the drug in their world felt fun and harmless. But as their relationships dissolved and their connections became darker and more difficult, the detrimental effects of the drugs became obvious, especially for Stevie Nicks.
Like many artists of the era, Fleetwood Mac operated within a music industry where excess was often normalised and even celebrated. What initially seemed like part of the rock and roll lifestyle gradually evolved into something far more destructive.
Even though everyone partook, Nicks’ reliance on drugs got worse and worse. When the group went on a hiatus in 1982, most members used it as a moment of peace. But Nicks kept spiralling until a doctor told her that she’d burnt a hole into her nose, and any moke coke could cause a brain haemorrhage. She remembered being told, “The next time you do cocaine. It won’t be pretty”.
The warning served as a turning point. For years, Nicks had managed to balance enormous professional success with increasingly dangerous personal habits, but the reality of the physical damage forced her to confront the severity of her addiction.
“All of us were drug addicts, but there was a point where I was the worst drug addict,” she remembered of the moment. “I was a girl, I was fragile, and I was doing a lot of coke. And I had that hole in my nose. So it was dangerous.”
So, in 1986, she finally felt ready to listen to the calls of concern from her friends and bandmates and checked herself into the Betty Ford rehab clinic. She kicked the cocaine habit then but found herself back in rehab in the 1990s for an even worse addiction to Valium, first prescribed to her in an attempt to get her clean but proved to be an even deadlier fixation.
Music became her comfort, as it has been her entire life. Just as she has written her feelings, fears, and thoughts into so many songs as an artist, her listening habits also beautifully reflect the way that songs have always been there for her. As a music fan as well as a maker, she turns to tunes for comfort, companionship and catharsis. During her stint in rehab, she turned to one song in particular, reminding her of a dear friend and letting the song’s powerful message guide her.
“When I thought I was dying in rehab in 1994, ‘I Won’t Back Down’ was my mantra,” she said, thinking about the 1989 track from Full Moon Fever. It’s a song of affirmation where each and every line and verse is a powerful message of strength and resilience as Petty vows to take a stand against a world that’s intent on dragging people down. “It lifted me up out of the pain and made me fight through it,” Nicks said of the song.
But the presence of Petty in her life and the fact that this song was sung by a musician she loved and admired so much also helped. Nicks had been obsessed with Petty long before she met him, once joking, “If he were ever to ask me to leave Fleetwood Mac and join Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, I’d probably do it.”
After they met in the late 1970s, they remained close friends until Petty’s death in 2017. Nicks had said that she wanted to be a “girl Tom Petty”, looking up to him as the epitome of a rockstar and a musician. He was a figure she clearly revered and admired, so as she fought to save her own life in rehab, the influence of his song and his presence in her life was a vital guiding light. “Tom Petty’s songs are like a great book you revisit when you need help,” she said, “His songs make me better.”
Nicks’ story demonstrates how music can be both a source of inspiration and a lifeline. While Tom Petty may never have intended ‘I Won’t Back Down’ to become a recovery anthem, its message arrived at exactly the right moment for one of his closest friends. Decades later, the song remains a reminder not only of Petty’s songwriting gift but also of Nicks’ determination to overcome some of the darkest chapters of her life.
