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.

The results of this study are completely logical. If kids are raised to put things away when they’re finished using them, eat a good diet, save money, and so on, they tend to carry the things they’ve learned into adulthood.

Also, if kids are taught to work out solutions to problems rather than taking drugs or alcohol to ‘forget’ them, they will grow up with that life skill. It will not only help them confront life instead of escaping from it, it will also help them create the life they want.

Kids who turn to drugs or alcohol when under stress will never really learn those skills and their lives could be miserable. They may not do street drugs but, eventually, they could wind up with a prescription drug addiction – which may be even worse.

It’s also important that parents set a good example. In fact, the ‘do as I say not as I do’ approach doesn’t work very well at all. If parents are solving their problems with drugs – sleeping pills, antidepressants, painkillers, tranquilizers and so on – that teaches the kids that that’s how adults cope.

If you want your kids to face up to life and use their head to make it better, teach them the basic skills they need to do that, and set a good example.

It will really pay off for you in the end.

Who’s most likely to NOT use marijuana?

• Those getting A’s in school
• Those participating in sports or other extra-curricular activities
• Those who live in a two-parent household

When raising your kids, you might want to take the above into consideration.

Many people think of marijuana as completely harmless. But studies have linked marijuana use to several physical, mental and emotional problems;

• high levels of anxiety
• depression
• wanting to kill yourself
• aggression
• psychotic symptoms
• tobacco use
• nicotine dependence
• other substance abuse
• poor sleep
• respiratory problems
• cancer
• learning, memory, and intellectual functioning problems
• poor school performance
• school dropout

And things get worse if the usage continues beyond adolescence into young adulthood and beyond.

“There is considerable evidence that it’s not just an innocent sort of thing,” said the lead author of the study, Ty S. Schepis, a professor at Texas State University in San Marcos. “This is a period of strong change in the brain. We’re very concerned that marijuana alters the ways in which adolescent brains normally mature, particularly among heavy users.”

Parents who think of marijuana as a harmless right of passage and know or suspect that their kids are using it might want to familiarize themselves with more of the research and get addiction help for their kids before further damage is done.

A successful drug rehab program takes months, and you need a team of professionals to help you through it. Getting off the drugs or alcohol is the first step, which in itself can be painful, sometimes dangerous and definitely needs supervision, then there’s getting all the residual drugs out of the body and getting healthy, thoroughly identifying and addressing the reason the person needs drugs and alcohol in the first place, and then setting things up so when the person leaves the rehab facility they can go back into the environment knowing they’ll be able to stay on the path.

With Sheen’s condition right now, I’d say that’s the least he needs.

But there is another possibility that might work – joining Sean Penn in Haiti. Sean went there a year ago planning on staying for a few days or weeks and is basically still there. On a recent TV show, he was referred to as the mayor of a 55,000 strong tent city. According to recent news reports, Sean and Charlie are friends. And Sean would welcome Charlie’s help.

Joining his friend in Haiti might be just what Charlie needs. It can really change a person to leave their cushy environment and spend some time helping others – not just with money, but actually getting involved in the physicality of it all. And, in Haiti, there’s no end to the physicality needed.

An experience like that can really change a person’s values and priorities. They come out of it seeing life differently. Whatever is bothering them and causing their drug addiction often pales in the light of what others have to live with every day. And it might bring Charlie back to earth.

Let’s hope, for Charlie’s sake, and his family’s, that he takes Sean up on his offer.

Sounds fair really – don’t you think? Why should we, the taxpayers, pay for that person to go to drug rehab?

Well, for one thing, it’s either rehab or prison. And rehab is a lot cheaper. The cost varies from county to county, program to program, but analysts say it roughly equates to $2.50 saved for every $1.00 paid towards rehabilitating drug offenders. That’s a lot of taxpayers dollars.

But it does kind of make you feel like you’re in between a rock and hard place, right? Especially since you really feel $1.00 coming out of your pocket every time you see the taxes taken out of your paycheck or write your annual IRS check, but you never really experience the joy of getting back $2.50. In fact, you can’t really see that $2.50 anywhere – California owes $265 billion.

Getting people off drugs so they can be productive members of the California citizenship might be a good thing – obviously the state is producing far less than it’s consuming, or someone involved in the state budget just doesn’t have a clue what to do with money.

On a more personal level, I’m sure the ‘every $1.00 spent on drug rehab saves $2.50 for taxpayers’ applies with even higher numbers in families. How much is your son or daughter being drug-free, happy, productive and out of danger worth to you? How much is it costing you to have them addicted to drugs – financially and emotionally? I would say lots more than 2.5 times the cost of drug rehab.

Ever look at it that way? If you’re tired of living with drug addiction and abuse, call Drug Rehab Referral to find help.

Lindsay is no stranger at this point to the world of alcohol and drugs, or the court system. She was put on probation for a three year period and has been wearing an alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet since May, and well before that, ordered by the court to attend alcohol treatment classes. But, she keeps pushing her luck. She’s been caught drinking with the alcohol bracelet on and she’s missed several of her treatment classes.

Well, it looks like her luck ran out. She’s been sentenced to 90 days in jail and has to go to an in-patient drug rehab program. When the judge came down with that sentence, Lindsay started to cry and plead with the court not to do that to her, but it was too little, too late. The judge basically looked at the apology as insincere and the tears as those of a crocodile.

News has also surfaced about Lindsay being prescribed a very strong painkiller called Dilaudid. This is a drug that has been compared to morphine and even heroin. She’s also prescribed Ambien (to help her sleep) and Adderall (to combat anxiety). There are too many bright, young stars being prescribed whatever drugs they want with tragic outcomes like overdose and death.

Honestly, I think the judge is doing right by Lindsay to up the ante in terms of her consequences. So far, probation and an alcohol-detecting ankle bracelet haven’t worked. And, with doctors being willing to prescribe whatever drugs she wants, coupled with the idea that she’s basically untouchable, she obviously doesn’t have a clue about responsible behavior and moral values. If she’s not willing to help herself, the law will.

Hopefully she actually dives into the drug rehab program portion of sentence and gets a clue. It would be awful if she wound up dead like so many of our favorite celebs and singers in recent years.

This week, they were finally found guilty of the charges. And, the reason behind all of the prescription writing was money. So, the “doctor” was no more than a glorified drug dealer.

With prescription drug abuse being such a rampant and devastating problem here for us in the US, it’s amazing that they got as far as they did before getting into trouble. I mean, how come 68 people had to die before anything was done?

This makes it more important than ever to put prescription monitoring programs into place. Not only are we dealing with addicts who “doctor shop”, but we’re dealing with shady doctors who don’t care what the effects are in terms of prescribing dangerous medications as long as their pockets continue to be padded with cash. I’m not referring to all doctors, of course, but there are some out there, apparently, who need to have this enforced. Such a shame!

Prescription drug overdoses are the second leading cause of death in the United States right now. We seriously need to get on the ball and start putting some programs in motion to straighten out the mess that has been created. And, that doesn’t mean sending all of the heroin users to methadone clinics either! We need to get people rehabilitated and living drug free lives.

If you know of anyone who is suffering from prescription drug abuse, or uses them recreationally for a “little bit of fun”, it’s no joke! They need help! Drug rehab help, to be exact. Don’t let them become a prescription drug overdose death statistic.

Unfortunately, this is quite common in the drug detox and drug rehab world and these types of facilities see this every day. They don’t just get people needing help for drugs like Cocaine, Meth or Heroin, they are helping children who have addiction problems due to sports injuries who become dependent and/or addicted to their pain medication.

As a parent, it’s important to stay on top of helping your teen with prescription painkillers or any medications for that matter. Not only because of the risk for dependency and addiction, but also because of the risk of overdose. With the rising statistics of teenage prescription drug abuse, it’s your duty to play this role in your child’s life.

And, while it can be considered controversial, there’s always drug testing. Whether at home or in school sports programs, however controversial it may be, it could save a child’s life!

Really, you don’t have to live like that. An alcohol and drug addiction treatment center gets them off the drugs or alcohol, works with them to find the reasons they’re drinking or taking drugs, helps them resolve whatever those issues are, and works out the changes they need to make in their lives so they can stay sober. And it actually works! It’s not a hopeless situation.

The state of New York is currently running a new campaign to get people to quit drinking and taking drugs. They have a website with alcohol and drug recovery stories – stories of parents who got their kids back, or long-term addicts who’ve served jail time and, after getting help through an addiction treatment center are now, and have been for years, up-standing members of their community. Read the stories – you’ll see that it is possible.

There are some things in life we have little control over – but alcohol and drug abuse in the family is not one of them. Get your family member through alcohol rehab or a drug addiction program and it will change their lives, and yours.

Nevertheless, lawmakers are threatening to cut drug court funding in Virginia (which has a serious prescription drug addiction problem and needs help more than most other states).

This is an issue the general public really should be up in arms about. It helps everyone – parents who are worried about their kids being exposed to drugs will have less to worry about, the environment will be safer overall, the cost of private health insurance could go down if we’re not paying for people showing up in hospital emergency wards because of overdoses or drug-related accidents – the list of potential benefits goes on and on.

As taxpayers, we have the ability to influence how our tax dollars are spent. If you don’t want our money to be wasted on systems that don’t work, like our penal system, get active – speak to your congressman to get them to back up drug courts, addiction treatment centers and other things that can effectively handle the drug problem.