“Absolutely lost”: The years of recording Stevie Nicks doesn’t remember
It’s easy to look at stories as heavy and complex as Stevie Nicks‘ and view them as a major triumph, where darkness far outweighs the light. However, for Nicks, it’s never that simple. In fact, when looking back on some of the more definitive moments of her life and career, Nicks often sees these chapters for what they are—distant tragedies that existed somewhere just beyond reach.
While it’s understandable to see Nicks’ journey as one defined by its own successes, both musically and personally, the intricacies of her experiences point towards something far less easily simplified by the typical survival story. For starters, Nicks’ journey with addiction was never as straightforward or as linear as simply overcoming it, and the ramifications of attempting a cleaner path changed more about her life and view of it than she perhaps anticipated.
At first, Nicks’ viewed her cocaine use as something lighthearted that most people in the spotlight dabbled in. “I was a happy person back then,” she once reflected to Billboard. “I just got addicted to coke, and that was a very bad drug for me.” Thus, what started as something seemingly harmless soon escalated into a full addiction, leading to one specific wake-up call moment when her doctor told her she had given herself a hole in her nose.
She eventually started taking another drug, Klonopin, to help curb her cocaine addiction, though this only set her on a worse path of compromised health and an inability to get clean. In the 1990s, Nicks re-entered rehab, though she would suddenly be faced with the reality of things getting worse before they get better, leading to a hazy period of time she would later struggle to grip onto.
Discussing the period between 1989 and 1993, Nicks told BAM that these years were “absolutely” and “horribly lost”.
She continued, “It’s kind of a drag. When you’re just about to turn 50, you think of how so many of your precious 40s are gone, never to be brought back. It was so awful that I could go into a psychiatrist’s office and they could put me on this medication that nearly destroyed my career, nearly destroyed me, nearly destroyed my parents because they just lost me for those years.”
While she entered the clinic for all of the right reasons, the experience made her feel even worse, leading to an inability to engage in the way she wanted to during this crucial pursuit of recovery. As she recalled: “In those 45 days [of rehab], my hair turned gray, my skin molted, I had a headache from the second I got in there until the day I left, I didn’t sleep, and I couldn’t go to any of the therapy things, I was so sick. It was awful.”
However, throughout the varying trials and tribulations of navigating the wilderness to better health, Nicks remained a close friend of music. As someone who has always turned to the art to channel all of life’s convoluted spectrum of emotions, holding it close during her time in rehab meant never truly feeling completely alone. Incidentally, one of her favourites during this time was Tom Petty’s ‘I Won’t Back Down’, which also became her mantra, helping to see her through.
And even emerging from the other side, with frequent ruminations about the time that almost destroyed her, Nicks’ story isn’t all about tragedy. Although these moments deserve acknowledgement for being some of her toughest years, they also form part of the whole, speaking to Nicks’ character and her resilience in the face of anything that came her way.
