Tom Petty Once Claimed Drugs Don’t Help You Make Better Music

Tom Petty wasn’t an ardent drug advocate; he didn’t want to share his drug story, so it wouldn’t seem he was encouraging its use. His biographer, Warren Zanes, revealed the musician’s stand to The Washington Post, “The first thing he said to me on the subject is ‘I am very concerned that talking about this is putting a bad example out there for young people. If anyone is going to think heroin is an option because they know my story of using heroin, I can’t do this.'”

Years later, the “I Won’t Back Down” singer summoned the courage to share his story, which started in the ’90s when his wife of 20 years divorced him. Tom resorted to heroin to keep himself in check.  

Drugs Don’t Work

Tom spoke about the rampant use of drugs in the music industry; although he claimed he wouldn’t preach to anyone about what they should or shouldn’t do with their life, he nonetheless shared, “Drugs don’t work. I’m not one to tell people how to live, but I’ve never seen it work out for anybody. You never see somebody and say, ‘The cocaine is really looking good on you.'”

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He added, “Musicians have always been drawn to drugs, especially marijuana and heroin, because they’re probably the most musical drugs — they enhance music. Coke is the most useless drug I ever came across, because it don’t do nothing but make you want more coke and irritable and edgy. I never thought it was good for music.”

Tom Petty stuck with Marijuana until his death

Thankfully he dropped his heroin habit with the help of Stevie Nicks, but continued with marijuana because of his belief that “Marijuana is very musical.” Tom further shed light on the music-stimulating potential of marijuana. “When you’re writing, sometimes it can open a creative door. But it’s a falsehood that it’s an automatic ticket to better music; that’s just not true.”

However, he claimed it wasn’t like that in the ’90s when his performance in the studio was hinged on drugs. “But nowadays, it’s not like the stuff we used to smoke and make records with,” Tom recounted. “Nowadays, if I’m going to smoke pot, I would do it at the end of the session when we’re playing stuff back. Otherwise it would slow me down,” he concluded.

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