If you have a son or daughter who is a musician, or aspires to be one, you might also have heard from them that drugs and alcohol get their creative juices flowing. The MusiCares MAP Fund, which has save the lives and careers of many musicians by getting them through drug rehab, dispels that idea.

Parents, family members and friends sometimes struggle for years to get the musicians in their lives into drug rehab. As long as a musician thinks their creativity depends on it, the pleas are likely to fall on deaf ears. But if they hear it from another musician – especially musicians who are undeniably successful – it might get through.

The 7th Annual MusiCares MAP Fund Benefit Concert welcomed many of those musicians, and honored Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan. Gahan, who after years of drug abuse survived a suicide attempt and a heroin overdose, lived to pick up his career and has now been sober for years.

“To be honest,” said Gahan, “If you go down that route, drugs are going to take command over everything you’re doing anyway, and that’s been my experience anyway,” said the U.K. born vocalist. “I went through a period before I got clean where I don’t think I played a record for like two years. I just didn’t care.”

In the end, that’s what drugs can do to you. All you care about are the drugs.

Take it from the many artists who have fought their addictions and won: Steven Tyler, frontman for Aerosmith, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, Grace Slick – the list goes on and on.

And, you will notice, many still have illustrious careers.

But hundreds have been lost. Here’s a short list:

• Elvis Presley
• Janis Joplin
• Jimi Hendrix
• Tim Buckley
• Tim Hardin
• Alan Wilson (from Canned Heat)
• Brent Mydland and Ron McKernan (from Grateful Dead)
• Dee Dee Ramone (from The Ramones)
• Gram Parsons (from The Byrds)
• Gregory Herbert (from Blood, Sweat & Tears)
• Hillel Slovak (from Red Hot Chili Peppers)
• John Belushi (from Blues Brothers)]
• John Bonham (from Led Zeppelin)
• John Kahn (from Jerry Garcia Band)
• Jonathan Melvoin (from Smashing Pumpkins)
• Keith Moon (from The Who)
• Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield (from Butterfield Blues Band)

and many, many more. If you check out the full list, just of well-known musicians, their average age when they died was 31.

Ask your musician friends if they want to risk ending their careers at the ripe old age of 31. Or would they rather still be playing to sold-out venues in their 60’s, like Steven Tyler and Eric Clapton?

Use this type of information to get your musician friends or relatives into drug or alcohol rehab. You may save their lives and careers. And, as many of the most successful musicians in the world will attest, it will also make them better musicians.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I hate to say anything bad about football – it’s an American institution, and a good percentage of our population would give up food before football.  And it’s true that if you wanted your kids to stay away from drugs and alcohol and lead a productive life,  you would get them involved in sports as an extra-curricular activity – all in all, a good thing.  But more and more, football is turning into a drinking sport instead of a healthy team activity. And many guys involved in football wind up in drug or alcohol rehab. Just read the news, you’ll see it every day.

Drinking after the game, and between games, going to parties, being a football star, getting into a college that’s better known for its football team and tail-gating parties than for its education seems to be as much as part of the game of football as the physical activity.

And many of the young football players in high school and college no longer look like the fit Adonises of yesteryear who take pride in their physical condition – they’re overweight and blubbery. I don’t know how some of them make it through a game without having a heart attack.

If your kid is going to play football, make sure you educate him about the sport – what it used to be – the pride of being a fit athlete and good team member – and encourage him to be that kind of football player, someone who takes the game and their physical condition seriously.

And let him know he can still get the chicks if he doesn’t drink. In fact, most girls would prefer a guy who isn’t binge drinking and then falling down drunk , who doesn’t smell like alcohol, who doesn’t feel he has to drink to prove himself or be one of the guys, and who doesn’t associate celebrating with booze. That’s admirable. Pouring pitchers of beer over someone’s head, vomiting, passing out, driving while drunk and risking your life, and that of your friends and innocent other drivers and pedestrians, or having to get someone else to drive you somewhere, is not. What kind of man is that?

Ask any girl – she’ll tell you that kind of stuff is not very attractive. Even if the guy is a ‘football star’.

In fact, if you want to keep your football player son away from alcohol, that argument may meet with more acceptance than any other.

If you can prevent your kids from drinking and they play the game well and take pride in themselves as an athlete, you’ve may have a winning combination. And your kid could have a much longer, more productive career that is not interrupted, or ended, by having to go to rehab.

Popularity: 1% [?]