The Foo Fighters were set to go on stage for a concert one Friday night.
March 25th, 2022, to be exact.
The fans were gathering in the venue.
The concert was gearing up.
When an announcement was made stating that they would not be performing.
Their drummer, Taylor Hawkins, was dead.
Unable to perform.
He was 50 years old.
He was found dead in his hotel room.
Emergency crews tried to revive him.
It was all in vain.
There were 10 substances found in his urine.
A potentially lethal mix that ultimately led his heart to say, no more.
He must have known he was playing Russian roulette.
A game no one can really win.
Except the bullet.
It seems Taylor Hawkins was no stranger to drugs.
He admitted to using them, enjoying them.
Even after a heroin overdose in 2001 nearly killed him back then.
I guess it is part of the rock and roll lifestyle.
Not just a stereotype.
And one would think that Taylor should have been happy.
From the outside looking in, he had a wife and three children. A beautiful home. Lots of cars and big boy toys. He should have been happy.
But therein lies the rub.
Addiction is an invisible pull, an unseen need to the untrained observer.
Addiction is a curse that silently, secretly, unfurls her nasty, sticky web.
So slowly that one is not even aware that one has become trapped.
Until it is too late.
Until the need becomes a must have, not a may have.
Until the quest for the thrill, the euphoria, the sedation, the numbness, becomes overwhelming.
The need to be anywhere but here.
Feeling anything but this.
An escape from the mundanities of life.
A passage through the wardrobe not to Narnia, but to nothingness.
The body can only take so much.
And I have come to learn a thing or two about addiction.
When I am feeling honest, I have to admit to myself that my own little brother was an addict.
His drug of choice was Lamb’s Rum.
A bottle a day.
Oh, and cocaine.
As was evidenced by the several used crack pipes I found around his apartment after he died.
And the doctor in the ICU who blatantly told me that my brother’s heart had been damaged by cocaine use.
The doctors don’t lie.
The tell-tale inflammation was right there on the X-ray.
My own little brother, a cocaine user.
How does that happen?
Looking back I can see the signs were there from a young age.
Looking back I can see that the impaired driving charges were a red flag that something was not right.
At the time, we thought he just liked to party too much.
Through his own path, he found other like minded “friends” who didn’t say “no”.
Hindsight is always 20/20.
Is there anything I could have done differently?
Perhaps.
But I can’t beat myself up about that now.
We choose our own paths.
My brother chose to be sedated for most of his.
Was it my parents fault? Was he not loved enough? He did not feel worthy of love?
The doctors had said he seemed anxious. Did he have anxiety? Depression? Other mental health concerns?
We will never know.
Because it is now too late.
His body succumbed to the abuse.
Another person taken too young at the hand of the cruel mistress of addiction.
Only to now know that we never do really know what is going on in the minds of some people.
Those that choose drugs or other methods to handle the pain of day to day living.
They can sure put up a good front.
Never letting on that something is amiss.
And even if we do notice and see it, rarely are we able to do anything about it.
Because denial and refusal to seek and accept help are the bedmates of addiction.
To unentangle oneself from the sticky web of addiction is a near impossible task.
Those that do, are a miracle.
Someone once said there is no such thing as an old addict.
They either get clean or die.
That seems to be the case again with Taylor Hawkins.
May his story be a wake up moment for anyone who thinks they may have an addict in their life.