The moment Stevie Nicks saved her life: “I was the worst drug addict”
Music has taken many artists far before their time. The creative world is rife with that kind of tragedy, as the sensitivity and struggle that so often fuels creativity can become fatal without the proper care. Or it’s the other option when the sex, drugs and rock and roll lifestyle can be lethal when left unchecked, spiralling out of control as addiction has claimed so many stars – Stevie Nicks knows she was almost one of them.
Looking back at the history of Fleetwood Mac, it’s unsurprising that the group turned to drugs. In 1976, during the recording of Rumours, the band had to go to work day in and day out and face up to heavy feelings, confronting the various romantic breakups and betrayals in the band both in life and in their music. “In the studio, we had a ritual in which the engineers and band members all started humming a tune – it changed over the years – which would serve as a siren’s call for cocaine, specifically the cocaine that I was invariably holding,” Mick Fleetwood wrote about that time, marking the moment when the substance started to become a crutch propping them up.
But when that emotional tumult hit the road during their tours, the band’s drug use got even heavier as they hit it hard simultaneously to try and get through the conflicts that cropped up, but also to try and numb it and have fun within the gang of people who were becoming increasingly frayed.
Out of them all, Stevie Nicks hit it hardest. Even after the group were on a hiatus, she couldn’t shake the habit she’d fallen into, finding that he reliance on coke was only gripping tighter and tighter to her.
And as casual use turns to full-blown addiction, the incidents tend to start happening. Nicks was almost blinded at one point. At another, doctors warned her that she’d burnt a hole in her nose and then one more sniff could be fatal. But addiction rarely lets an addict hear that, or acknowledge the danger.
Until, for the lucky ones, there’s a turning point moment. Nicks was one of those lucky ones, and hers came in 1985. After reuniting with Fleetwood Mac, the rest of the band saw the state she’d fallen into. “All of us were drug addicts, but there was a point where I was the worst drug addict,” she recalled, “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.” At the end of their Mirage tour, after an intervention from her friends, she got in her car and drove to save her life, arriving at the Betty Ford Clinic.
The famous rehab was opened by, and named after, Ford, the former first lady who had been bravely open about her own struggles with addiction. When Ford passed in 2011, Nicks was one of the first people to react to the death, sharing about how the clinic and the first lady saved her life.
“As far as I’m concerned, Betty Ford DID save my life,” she said, “I went to Betty Ford [The Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California] at the end of 1985 for cocaine addiction. In those days, she would actually come to speak at Betty Ford two or three times a month, so I got to hear her tell the whole story,” she added.
To her, Ford was an inspiration and a motivation; “I thought, ‘God, if Betty Ford can come through this, I can come through it, too.’ Talk about being famous and being in rehab! ‘Oh no, I can’t do that, I’m too famous’ – well, come on! She was the First Lady of the United States. So that really, really made my need to fix myself even stronger.”
But it’s not that it’s easy. Even with the motivation to save her life, the clinic puts its patients through their paces with strict regimes of chores, exercise and therapy. No one ever said saving your own life was simple, but for Nicks and for anyone suffering from addiction, it is worth it.
