Louis Armstrong, who used the infinitely safer drug marijuana throughout his 69 years, stated that it “makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro.”
Whilst some of the aforementioned jazz pioneers, like Ella Fitzgerald, stayed clean, several had a history of drug abuse, including heroin and cocaine, which often resulted in premature deaths. Louis Armstrong, who used the infinitely safer drug marijuana throughout his 69 years, stated that it “makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro.” Drugs are often used as a form of escaping the thoughts in one’s head and the anxieties of one’s existence. Whilst drug use was not uncommon among musicians in general, this pattern that many of the greats of jazz died young due to addictions speaks of a consistent level of turmoil, and alludes to their common experience of racism as a depressive factor in 20th Century America.