Fentanyl: The new age of rock’n’roll drugs
Fentanyl has already killed Prince and Tom Petty. There are whispers that it may have been a factor in the passing the Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan. Other abuses are going on right now. Zoomer Magazine takes a look at this new age of rock’n’roll drugs.
Death by recreational misadventure is so ‘60s. Legal prescription drugs seem to be an increasingly common culprit when stars are taken from us.
When the truth came out about Tom Petty’s addiction to various painkilling drugs, no one had to wonder why—certainly no one like me, a now ex-jogger who’s had three painful knee surgeries.
The autopsy statement released by Petty’s family said he’d been suffering from emphysema, chronic knee problems and a fractured hip that turned into a full break during his most recent tour. His pain was real and unimaginable.
The generation that grew up with rock as the soundtrack of its life had once seen its heroes die prematurely from “recreational” drugs—many at the weirdly significant age of 27. Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones (and later, as if maintaining a morbid tradition, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse).
And now? Death by recreational misadventure is so ‘60s. Ostensibly, legal prescription drugs seem to be an increasingly common culprit when stars are taken from us. It is a truism about the opioid epidemic that people don’t become addicts for a lark. They usually become addicted by being prescribed painkillers for one condition or another, without proper oversight.
