Did Jim Morrison Die In His Bathtub?

A new book suggests that he died of a heroin overdose at a night club in Paris. Interesting stuff.

Dead Addict Of The Day.

Today's dead addict is Layne Staley, lead singer of Alice In Chains. Like all the kickass guys of the Seattle grunge heyday, Staley developed a spectacular heroin problem. Like many of the dead addicts, it was a speedball that got him.

Not long ago, my husband and I were talking about drugs, and he mentioned doing speedballs. "Lots of times!" he told me, eagerly. Part of me wanted to beat him, and part of me wanted to cry. Thinking of how close he could have been to death...I can't imagine what it would have been like. I can't think about it. I can't stop thinking about it.

Layne Staley was found by his mother and stepfather, his body decomposing amongst an array of drug paraphernalia.

His mother and a drug counselor started the Layne Staley Fund after his death. It's a non-profit organization to raise money for drug treatment for the Seattle music community.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Today's dead addict is brought to you by the letter R: Alma Rubens.

A silent film star who rose to fame quickly, Rubens got her "big break" when a girl in a chorus line fell ill and she was asked to replace her simply because she was there. She joined the performance troupe, and travelled with them to Los Angeles. She left the troupe on the advice of her lover Franklyn Farnum, and they joined the movies together.

She starred opposite Douglass Fairbanks in a comedy called The Leaping Fish, which ironically poked fun at substance abuse. Alma was prescribed morphine by a physician when she had been sick. A few months after this initial exposure to opiates, she needed more and more of the drugs to function, and she progressed along to heroin. Her substance abuse wreaked havoc on her beauty and her acting ability, and she stopped getting offeres for roles.

She died of pneumonia brought on by her heroin addiction in 1931 at 31 years old.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Since I began my dead addict project, I've dreaded the day I'd reach this loathsome letter: Q. Fortunately, however, I've found a pretty interesting dead heroin addict to feature with a Q name. His name is Glenn Quinn, and he was Mark on Roseanne as well Allen Francis Doyle on Angel.

He is very handsome in a way I find particularly unnerving, with dark hair and blue blue eyes. He also has a wonderfully charming dimple. It is interesting to look at pictures of him because it is possible to determine how close you are to his death date by the sunken-ness of his cheekbones and eye sockets. It is a kind of sick face I'm particularly familiar with, and it frightens me to think that we might have been getting close to death.

He was found dead of a heroin overdose on the couch of a friend he was visiting in December of 2002.

He even has a few fan sites of his own, such as this one and this one.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Today's dead addict is going to break my strict alphabetical rule because it's Sid Vicious's birthday, and he'd be 50 today. Also, we're going to New York soon, and he hung out there a lot. So I'm in a Sid Vicious kind of mood.

Born John Simon Ritchie, he was one of the godfathers of punk rock, and his bass playing for the Sex Pistols made him famous. While he is not credited for being an exceptional musician, his attitude has been the model for many a pissed-off punk kid.

He met the lovely Nancy Spungen in 1977. She was a groupie looking for a rock and roll boyfriend, and the couple fell deeply in love and had a rocky, messy relationship that culminated in the break up of the Sex Pistols. Nancy was a heroin addict, and Sid soon started sharing her addiction.

Sid woke up one morning in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, and he found Nancy crumpled on the bathroom floor, dead from an apparent stab wound. He'd been high the night before, and he didn't remember killing her or seeing her get killed. There is speculation that she might have been murdered by robbery-minded drug dealers who'd visited their room earlier in the evening, as a substantial amount of money was also allegedly missing from the room.

Vicious went to jail for Spungen's murder, but his $30,000 bail was posted by Virgin Records. While out on bail, he obtained some heroin from his freakin' mother, and overdosed.

Thanks, mom.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Speedballs scare the shit out of me. My husband began his addictive trainwreck with an oxycontin addiction, and he liked to alternate oxy and cocaine. I'm sure he's done a speedball as well. Everyone who does a speedball dies.

Today's dead addict is the lovely River Phoenix, who died from a speedball, like Chris Farley, on Halloween morning in 1993. I can't believe it was 1993! That was so long ago...

I had a crush on River Phoenix way back when he was in Stand By Me. He established quite an impressive filmography for someone who died at age 23, appearing in 17 films and starring in many.

Here is a link to the Natalie Merchant song "River."

And here are a few quotes from him that I thought were pretty interesting:

"We moved around a lot. When I was four years old, I heard 'Fire and
Rain' a lot. So we were in Mexico and I was playing with a flashlight that was
going dead, and we couldn't afford any more batteries. My father asked me to
please stop, but I wanted to see how far I could push someone, so I kept on
turning it on and off. He said, 'Could you please stop this?' with a stern voice
and took it out of my hand, put it in the glove box and slammed it. I felt this
tremble, this fear of authority, and I felt I understood that you have to
respect people. That there was a reason behind it. That was the first concept of
reality as far as relationships go. I saw that there was not just this world of
vagueness that you can bounce off of."

And:

"I don't want to die in a car accident. When I die it'll be a glorious
day. It'll probably be a waterfall."

And also:

"I try to lie as much as I can when I'm interviewed. It's reverse
psychology. I figure if you lie, they'll print the truth."

Dead Addict Of The Day

I'd taken a bit of a break from finding dead addicts because the letter O just wasn't promising, especially following the long and interesting list of musicians and writers from Joplin to Lund to Kerouac to Morrison.

Malcolm Owen is a rather interesting character, however, He was the lyricist and lead singer of the band The Ruts, a late 70s punk rock ensemble. The band participated in the People Unite collective based in Southall, embracing anti-racist causes. The band reached a certain level of success prior to Owen's death from a heroin overdose in 1980, and while they continued to perform after he died, they never achieved the same notoriety.

As often happens, Owens had just weaned himself off the drug when he relapsed. Because his tolerance had dropped, he overdosed in the bathtub of his mother's apartment, and eventually died.

Here's a YouTubeclip of them playing live in Paris in 1980:

Dead Addict Of The Day

Today's dead addict of the day is Sublime's singer/guitarist/songwriter Brad Nowell. Brad died of a heroin overdose in May of 1996, just as the band was assuming a solid position in the music world, after completing third album, and preparing for a long-term career.

Sadly, Brad had just married his wife Troy 7 days before he was found dead of a heroin overdose in his hotel room.

Here's a tribute to him from a fan that's posted on the band's official website:

May 25, 1996 is a day all beloved and true Sublime fans will never forget. The lead vocalist/guitarist Bradley Nowell was found dead by his fellow bandmate Bud Gaugh at 11:30 AM in a San Fransisco hotel room due to a heroin overdose. He died at 28 leaving behind a band, a wife, a son, and one of the most endearing albums of 1996: Sublime. The album is in a category of its own mediating reggae, folk, and punk rock. During recording of the self-titled album it was one of the hardest times for the band. Brad, having his ups and downs with heroin and battling his addiction created alot of stress for everyone. However, this was how Brad felt it was easiest to express himself; on heroin.

Brad's music was truly unique. It was filled with passion and when he sang he would sin his heart out and went for it all the way. He would sit on street corners and just play his guitar and sing. His art and his creativity can only be described as a gift.

Brad was one of those great people that are hard to come by. Kurt Cobain had that same inspiring influence on the world but he did not have the simplicity that Brad had. Brad has so much honesty in his voice. For example in the song "Pool Shark" the very last lyrics of the song are "One day im gonna lose a war." He performed this song with so much emotion that the crowd could feel the pain in his heart as he sang the words. The words of his heart have changed peoples' lives. They have made a few of this generation not want to face the consequenses Brad faced the last few years of his life.

Brad was an inspiration to many of his fans and to many musicians of today. His music, his life, and most of all his passion will never be forgotten.

The band broke up shortly after his death.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Today's dead addict of the day comes again from the annals of the heroes of my adolescence. There is some unresolved conflict over whether or not the death of Jim Morrison was really related to his drug use, but the unofficial explanation of his bathtub death is that he died of the complications arising from the interaction of heroin and alcohol.

Here's a quote of Morrison's describing himself and his work from the Doors official website:

You could say it's an accident that I was ideally suited for the work I am doing. It's the feeling of a bowstring being pulled back for 22 years and suddenly being let go. I am primarily an American, second, a Californian, third, a Los Angeles resident. I've always been atrracted to ideas that were about revolt against authority. I like ideas about the breaking away or overthrowing of established order. I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom--external revolt is a way to bring about internal freedom. Rather than starting inside, I start outside--reach the mental through the physical.

He is one of the great junkies of the 20th century, and it's sad that he's dead. There could have been a lot of interesting music...

Morrison is also one of the great champions of drug culture. That's certainly why I became interested in him...all that quoting of William Blake and talk of finding inner truth through physical manipulations certainly appealed to me when I was using.

And he was right, in many ways. I did grow from my experiences with drugs. I'm stronger, smarter, and I have a different perspective than a lot of folks. Especially from my experiences with psychedelics, I think I've become more creative, developed more interesting and rich relationships, and become more compassionate. Maybe these kinds of growth would have happened anyway, but I found a shortcut through experimentation with drugs.

I am having a hard time remembering all of this now, after watching so many people wreck themselves with drugs and alcohol. The line is so fine to walk, but I'd be hypocritical if I didn't acknowledge at least some of the things that I learned from my early drug experiences.

I guess that's also something I'm learning from Nar-Anon, though, is the difference between someone who can dabble (although at the time, it certainly didn't seem like dabbling) and then grow out of it and someone who is an addict struggling with a life-long disease. I learned lessons from using, and then I moved on. He didn't learn lessons. He hasn't moved on. Our experiences of the world and our interactions with drugs are very different, and it's hard for me to understand sometimes. I thought I got the whole addiction business because I thought I'd been through it.

Boy, was I wrong.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Today's dead addict is the beautiful Zoe Lund. She was a child prodigy musician who grew up to be a writer, journalist, filmmaker, model and actress and general glamorous arty-type chick.

Her addictions began with heroin, but she died of complications from cocaine use at the age of 37. She switched drugs of choice when she relocated to Paris.

I thought this poem is interesting. She seems to be talking about the battle within herself between the addict and the Zoe. It's called "Opium Wars."

She wants there to be more of her.
More space taken by her body,
more decibels conquered by her voice,
more time by her wakefulness,
more equations by her addition.

She wants more, I want less.
Her blade is rusty, musty, sweaty and vain.
I like it clean and sharp and dark-bright.

She traffics in surplus,
I bare my essentials.
Her world is elastic but brittle.
Mine is bony but moonlit.
Hers flows, she ebbs.
Mine ebbs, I flow.
She dies in life, I live in death.

Here are two other links that are pretty interesting...I guess we might call them well-written glamorizations of the drug. But really, she's so pretty. I have a weakness for tragic beauty, well documented throughout this website.

There was this time when my husband and I were still an affair...I was visiting from New York, and I was in the bathroom of a fancy restaurant. He opened the door and came in to me. I was holding a rose I'd picked up...it was a place that was so nice they had roses in the bathroom. He took the rose from my hand, crushed it, and said, "Whenever I see something beautiful, I just want to ruin it."

And so I married him.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Alright, so I know he didn't die of heroin, but he did die of alcoholism, and after the letter J brought us Janis Joplin, one of my youth's heroes, I couldn't resist having the letter K be for Jack Kerouac, beat poet and novelist. I like to specialize in finding dead junkies, as it gives me something to point out to my husband over dinner (Did you know Chris Farley died from doing a speedball? You probably should ever do that, or you might die. You don't want to go out like Chris Farley, do you?)

But Jack Kerouac holds a special place in my heart. If I could pick any boyfriend, dead or alive, he's the only one who would compete with my husband. The book Desolation Angels changed my life...actually quite literally. I quit eating meat because of a particularly disgusting section of it about the way meat digests in the stomach. I think Kerouac himself was a vegatarian, if I remember correctly.

I was a huge sucker for all that drunken poet drinking port wine business. I guess I've been preparing myself for a life as a junky's wife for years.

Phrases from Desolation Angels moved me so much when I was about 16, like:

I will die, and you will die, and we all will die, and even the stars will fade out one after another in time.

or this bit from Big Sur:

Everything is the same, the fog says 'We are fog and we fly by dissolving like ephemera,' and the leaves say 'We are leaves and we jiggle in the wind, that's all, we come and go, grow and fall' — Even the paper bags in my garbage pit say 'We are mantransformed paper bags made out of wood pulp, we are kinda proud of being paper bags as long as that will be possible, but we'll be mush again with our sisters the leaves come rainy season' — The tree stumps say 'We are tree stumps torn out of the ground by men, sometimes by the wind, we have big tendrils full of earth that drink out of the earth' — Men say 'We are men, we pull out tree stumps, we make paper bags, we think wise thoughts, we make lunch, we look around, we make a great effort to realise everything is the same.'

It's just plain beautiful writing, beautiful sentiment. I imagined I was a Buddhist. I wrote poems in long scrawls with a typewriter, emulating his style as best as I could. I should read his stuff again...I'd gorged myself a bit on his work for a while, but it's been years now. I felt the same way about Janis Joplin or Grateful Dead for a long time, but I love to hear these songs now. They put me in a strange place...oh, and also listening to The Doors, especially in autumn, or when it first starts to get cold outside and the leaves are all changing...it makes me feel crazy in that way you can only feel when you're 16 years old, angry, lonely, and literary.

Ahhh my wasted youth!

Dead Addict Of The Day

Hollywood Fats was a blues musician who died of a heroin overdose in 1986.

Here's an excerpt and a link describing some of his contributions to blues guitar:

Just like William Blake and Vincent Van Gogh, Fats died before being recognized for his earth-shattering talent. Bandmate Larry Taylor, with over 40 years of studio work and association with Canned Heat, boldly acknowledged Fats as the greatest blues guitarist. These accolades are echoed by fellow bandmates Al Blake and Fred Kaplan, and those lucky to experience Hollywood Fats Band. Regretfully, the height of Hollywood Fats Band was during a lull in blues appreciation.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Everyone remembers Chris Farley, but do you know that he died from a speedball (coke and heroin)? Here's a nice memorial from his brother and a link to the Chris Farley foundation:

Memories of my brother by Tom Farley

The Farley family loved to laugh. We were a large, Irish family growing up in the Midwest who wanted to see humor in everything. Laughter to us was a tonic. It made the good times better and the bad times somewhat less so. Most of all, we really loved to just make each other laugh. And that, I think, was what made Chris so enjoyable to watch.

For Chris it wasn't enough to just "be" funny; he really wanted and needed to make you laugh and feel good. The sincerity with which he was able to do that was obvious, whether you saw him on stage, on screen, or up close in person. Chris' humor was right from the heart. He never scripted his jokes or worked on creating a better "act." He simply thought of something funny and went with it.

But what I remember best about Chris was how he loved to laugh. Some comedians need all the attention; they crave it. Not Chris. He would double up at the slightest of jokes, which I saw him do countless times; with friends and comedians alike. And when the joke was on him, Chris was hysterical. He loved it!

Throughout our years growing up, I could never understand how Chris was able to get himself in trouble with a teacher, a coach, or our parents, and still come away with them smiling and rolling their eyes. Now I just marvel at that skill. I sure hope my kids find that ability some day - what an gift!

Imagine Chris (the accused) standing before a teacher who is scolding him on some infraction. As she recites to him exactly what he had done to disrupt her class, the teacher (listening to her own words) begins to realize just how funny the stunt really had been. Better yet, the entire situation would be fully supported by an almost angelic look Chris could display, backed up by a genuine Catholic need for seeking forgiveness. He literally wanted everyone to see the humor in what he had done; even the person he knew would eventually have to discipline him for it.

Chris was always willing to make others happy. He was our little wind-up toy. When we wanted to be amused, we asked Chris to do something outrageous, and he delivered. This willingness to do anything had consequences. I imagine that deep down Chris had a very strong need to be accepted. Fairly typical of your average teenager. But a lifetime of being overweight made that acceptance all the more difficult in Chris' mind and probably caused a good deal of self-doubt in him. So, he did some things that his conscience and good reason told him would ultimately not be the best for him. Chris chose the immediate pleasure he got in pleasing others over the long-term cost to himself. When people around him started to drink and take drugs, Chris joined in. The ability to say no was just not there.

The role of the older brother is often one of setting the right example and being the model for others to follow. But I look back at some things my younger brother did and can only wish I could someday live up to his standard. Little is known or told of how, while a cast member of Saturday Night Live, Chris would attend Mass almost daily and often helped out in a local senior center connected to his church. He also loved to visit children's wards in hospitals. He was very serious about his faith and service to the community. The smile on the faces of those he helped was worth gold to Chris.

But for me the single most memorable moment in Chris' life was when he asked me to attend his third anniversary of sobriety at an AA meeting that he would be leading. The address he gave me was surprising at first. It was on the far west side of New York, in an area known as Hell's Kitchen. The building was dark and completely run down. Manhattan hosts many AA meetings each day, many in the ritzier parts of the city - Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue, Upper East Side. But Chris chose this meeting. It was where he met each week for three years. Upstairs, I found Chris at the head of the room conducting a meeting that was filled with what looked like refugees from the nearest homeless shelter. But here was Chris talking about the disease he shared with everyone in the room; a disease that made him no better or worse than each person present. That was so much like him. And I will never forget how they all looked at Chris with admiration and respect. Not because he was a famous actor but because, like them, he was battling a very powerful enemy. A battle that they all would fight each day for the rest of their lives. But that day, they had won their battles. And when Chris was finished, we all celebrated and had cake. Chris loved that day. So did I.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Today's dead addict comes to us from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. His name was Howie Epstein, and he played bass for the band. Tom Petty had this to say about him:

"You gotta love him, I don’t know if I ever tell him how good he is. Tonight, there was a line early in the show I could just barely sing. I was having to work harder than I normally do to make it, I was getting really close on the mike. I was thinking, 'Oh boy, I hope I can do this...' I got to it and I heard Howie singing it with me over his mike. It sounded great, it sounded like a double track. I just looked at him, he caught my eye like 'Yeah!' It made me feel great, 'cause I know he was thinking the same thing, 'I know he’s tired, I’ll cover him—wham! Got it!' That’s what a great band’s all about. That’s what it’s all about."

He died at the age of 47 of complications from his heroin use.

I'm noticing a pattern among these dead junkies--they're mostly terribly talented, but either they die too young or they end up being a better (cleaner) artist's sidekick or helper.

It makes me sad to think of my husband and all his tremendous talent. I hope he doesn't end up a footnote to someone else's life.

The Needle and the Damage Done

Here's a cover of the Neil Young song. The original song is a tribute to his bandmate Danny Whitten's descent into and eventual death from heroin addiction. The song's simple and haunting, like all Neil Young.

I caught you knockin'
at my cellar door
I love you, baby,
can I have some more
Ooh, ooh, the damage done.

I hit the city and
I lost my band
I watched the needle
take another man
Gone, gone, the damage done.

I sing the song
because I love the man
I know that some
of you don't understand
Milk-blood
to keep from running out.

I've seen the needle
and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie's
like a settin' sun.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Today's dead addict is the poet Michael Dransfield. There is some controversy over whether or not his death was truly related to a heroin overdose, as he had some health problems that had plagued him throughout his youth. The Australian poet died at the age of 25.

Here's a link explaining Dransfield's connection with the drug world.

Here's one of his poems:

sea

you eat ships
you taste wrong
you isolate and desolate
you are not home to man;
yours is the
subtlest beauty.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Today's dead addict is Kurt Cobain. While he didn't exactly die from drugs, I bet that his legendary heroin use contributed quite a bit to his untimely death.

Cobain's addiction began in high school with the opiate drug Percodan, and later accelerated until he discovered heroin. He overdosed in 1993, but his wife Courtney Love revived him with an illegal shot of Narcan instead of taking him to the hospital. This article from Wikipedia recounts the conspiracy theories surrounding his death.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Today's dead addict is our first female of the series, Pamela Courson, who also often went by the name Pamela Morrison.

Pamela Courson Morrison was the common law wife of Jim Morrison. Here's some information about her:

A self-proclaimed creation of Jim Morrison, Courson was a complex and compelling woman who lived several roles in her relationship with the Doors lead singer: groupie, muse, and wife, to name a few. Pam and Jim's relationship was relatively private and long term for a rock couple then and maybe for any couple anymore. The two were essentially beautiful booze- and drug-addled twentysomethings with money to burn, and their fatal flaw was not so much being at odds with the material world as it was never having been forced to confront it without help from agents, roadies, groupies, or sycophants.

The Doors' keyboardist and co- founder (with Jim), Ray Manzarek, claims that Pamela and Jim will "go down in history as great lovers,'' and that their tale recalls Romeo and Juliet, Heloise and Abelard. Perhaps one could argue that a more fitting, albeit less flattering, comparison might be Sid (Vicious) and Nancy (Spungeon).

I'm a sucker for the idea of a great romance, and they seem to have had one. She inherited Morrison's fortune after he died, but she never saw much of the money because of lawsuits against the estate. She died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Remember this guy? He's was the guy who got Patrick Swayze's dance partner pregnant in Dirty Dancing.

His story is pretty interesting. I never realized he was a journalist as well. I hope that my newfound obsession with addiction doesn't lead me to start using. I already have thought of it...maybe I should try heroin and see what it's all about. I never really liked opiates. Well, there was the one notable moment when I drank and drank the liquid hydrocodone my grandmother had for her cancer pain. God, what a loser I was. She couldn't take the medicine, but still.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on Max Cantor.

Michael 'Max' Cantor (c.1959 - 3 October 1991) was an American journalist and actor in films such as Dirty Dancing (1987) and Fear, Anxiety and Depression (1989). He was a 1982 graduate of Harvard University, where he lived in Adams House and starred in several productions by the then-student director Peter Sellars. His writings for The Village Voice on ibogaine as a cure for heroin addiction, and his interest in the cult surrounding East Village cannibal murderer Daniel Rakowitz may have led to his premature death of a heroin overdose. He became an addict while researching addicts in New York and died of an undiluted shot of pure heroin at the age of 32.

Dead Addict Of The Day

Today's dead addict still comes from the letter B family--Lenny Bruce. Here's the quote from Wikipedia on his death, featuring everyone's favorits junky fetish object, a syringe:

On August 3, 1966, Bruce was found dead at the age of 40 in the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home at 8825 Hollywood Boulevard. A syringe and burned bottle cap were found nearby, along with various other narcotics paraphernalia. His official cause of death was acute morphine poisoning caused by an accidental overdose.[1]

He was interred in Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Mission Hills, California, but an unconventional memorial on August 21 was controversial enough to keep his name in the spotlight. The service saw over 500 people pay their respects, led by legendary record producer Phil Spector. Cemetery officials had tried to block the ceremony after ads for the event encouraged attendees to bring box lunches and noisemakers. Dick Schaap famously eulogized Bruce in Playboy, with the memorable last line: "One last four-letter word for Lenny: Dead. At forty. That's obscene."

Bruce is survived by his daughter, Kitty Bruce, who resides in Pennsylvania as of the 2000s. In the 1970s, Kitty Bruce was romantically involved with the late comedian Freddie Prinze. His former wife, Honey Harlow Friedman, lived in Honolulu, Hawaii, until her death on September 12, 2005. His mother, Sally Marr, a comedienne and talent agent, died on December 14, 1997, in Los Angeles, California, at age 91.

Here's a video of the legendary comedian live in 1965.



I'm sorry, folks. After tonight's scene, I'm all spent for witty commentary. Lenny Bruce was a great comedian. Like me, he cussed a lot and was often in trouble for the things he said.