Special Guest: Donnie

Hear some words of wisdom from someone who survived the 1960's and lived to tell about it. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Time again for Doc Shock, Your Addiction Lifeguard Podcast. I am Dr. Doc DeBurker, a psychologist, licensed professional counselor, and addiction specialist. If you are suffering from addiction, misery, trauma, whatever it is, I'm here to help. If you're in search of help to try to get your life back together, join me here at Doc Shock Your Addiction Life Guard, the Addiction Recovery Podcast. I wanted to be real clear about what this podcast is intended for. It is intended for entertainment and informational purposes, but not considered help. If you actually need real help and you're in need of help, please seek that out. If you're in dire need of help, you can go to your nearest emergency room, or you can check into a rehab center or call a counselor like me and talk about your problems and work through them. But don't rely on a podcast to be that form of help. It's not. It's just a podcast. It's for entertainment and information only. So let's keep it in that light, alright? Have a good time, learn something, and then get the real help that you need from a professional. I recently had the opportunity to get on the uh podcast interview process here, a uh man who uh lived through the sixties and the seventies and the eighties and the nineties. He tells his stories of life and getting through his addiction and his understanding of usage from that historical perspective. And we start with his the beginnings of uh just after high school. And he will tell you about his uh living with his brothers and uh his brother Kenny. In our family, Kenny was notorious. Um the first one who really uh made it into the music world. And uh he has some interesting stories to tell. So I think we pick him up here when he starts talking about uh when he's moving from the small town of Westland, Oregon, to the big city of Portland in the 70s.

SPEAKER_01: 2:35

That was 1974.

SPEAKER_00: 2:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 2:38

And so we had already gone and lived in Portland. So we were coming from Westland. Yeah, we moved up to Portland, I think, uh was 1965. And uh Portland had its own little culture going there. Uh, because I remember right before we left uh for California was when uh they had the uh Vortox uh music festival to try because the American Legion was there. So they were afraid of the uh protests and everything going on. And we wanted to go to the rock festival, but my parents wouldn't let us. So we went to the protest instead. That was the one I think it made national news because they actually uh brought in the riot police. Um, because the American Legion was a big thing at that time and the Vietnam War was still raging in those. So, you know, it was that period of time where we actually had to run to get away from the riot police, and then we I I remember we dropped some acid. That was one of the first times I dropped acid was during that protest. So I think it was the next summer then that we went down, because that was the when we went down to California.

SPEAKER_00: 3:43

And your trip to California was to specifically go stay with Kenny or hang out with Kenny, your brother.

SPEAKER_01: 3:50

Right. We were supposed to get a musical group together. Uh you know, which which we could try, but I I think it was Kenny was much more into drugs than we were. In fact, he had a a psychiatrist, his name was Carl Younger, that would uh prescribe him quaaludes and uh at a perk dance, which you can't get anymore. And he was also doing angel dust and those kind of things, which you know we had never been exposed to. We were basically pretty much just stuck to the hippie thing, uh smoking weed and drinking and uh dropping acid every once in a while.

SPEAKER_00: 4:22

And Kenny and Kenny at that time had been making a living in Los Angeles because he's living in he's he was living in Laurel Canyon. Laurel Canyon. And so he's he's making a living as a musician. And he'd been playing like he played on the Smother's Brother show, I think. And he did and he was he was doing okay and he's your brother, so it's like, hey, come on down and living's easy, it's it's LA.

SPEAKER_01: 4:46

Yeah, and uh well he did play uh I and I think it was the uh Tommy Dorsey band, but he always ended up losing the job for some reason or another.

SPEAKER_00: 4:55

Well he was he he told me that he was always doing something that was ending getting him fired because he was usually spouting off with somebody that had the power to fire him. And so he would piss off somebody uh with his antics or his you know, his words, his attitude or whatever.

SPEAKER_01: 5:12

And and I think yeah, he he was that way. I guess the one of the things with the Tommy Dorsey band, he Tommy Dorsey said something about his wife, Beverly, that he didn't like. So he got fired from that because he took Tommy Dorsey, the guy who was supposed to be Tommy Dorsey anyway, uh the leader of the band and he threw him into the swimming pool. And so that was the end of that job for them. And uh he turned down a lot of really good jobs because he just didn't want to do them. Um you know, just uh doing for movie soundtracks and those kind of things. So he was working with a guy named Johnny Mandel who wrote that was for the MASH, the movie, the same song for that and stuff, and uh yeah, but I it's because he wanted to do drugs too much. He was always home and he was uh and it was the angel dust that I think really just finally kind of fried him out.

SPEAKER_00: 6:00

Yeah, PC. I tried that. PCP will do that. PCP when when you it was when you were um uh when you were in LA during that time, and this was in 74, 7 70, 37. Yeah, 74.

SPEAKER_01: 6:15

Uh pretty much I stayed 74 to 76, and then I went back down, I think it was probably 78 and stayed till about 81. With with two times that I played uh with Kenny, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 6:27

But you think that the drugs and the use of drugs for Kenny as a as a professional musician, you think that kind of derailed his his ability to get jobs, gigs, and play, but he was playing at a fairly high level. But you think that's yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 6:41

I I mean I watched it. I watched it. Um he would get so high on Quauludes that one of the story his wife would would tell us was that he was so high one time that uh she found him out in the garden. And what he had been doing out in the garden, they don't know, but anyway, he had been out there in his underwear and she just found him passed out, looking straight up into the you know, uh that that happened quite a few times. Uh he gave me Quaaludes once, and I I still don't remember what happened. I just kind of like faded out and boom, I was gone. I did not like the Quaalutes at all.

SPEAKER_00: 7:16

I I you know it's kind of interesting how and I know I know part of the the reason that he was able to uh to get away with that kind of thing, um because his expenses were like nothing. And I he told me that he was had lived in the same apartment in Laurel Canyon from whatever '62 on, and the rent never went up. He said the guy raised the rent one time and 150 bucks, and that was it. So having the ability to produce revenue enough through the gigs that he had to get the money to be able to live, that was easy for him.

SPEAKER_01: 7:48

Well, it was uh his wife, Beverly, knew how to work the system. So they were always on food stamps, um, they always had some kind of unemployment or uh welfare. Um and she knew how to work the system, so they never really had to work regular jobs. We had to work regular jobs. At one point, he did. They lost some kind of government service, and so he had to work uh a regular job with me. I was working a fast food place called Fat Jacks, which was right on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. And they uh we wore t-shirts that said Fat Jacks, best meat in town. If you can't eat it, beat it. And uh he lost that job because they actually caught him stealing food. Uh so you know Kenny was a great guy, but he had uh, I don't know, he just uh he had a way about him of uh uh just kind of uh losing opportunities and things through stupid means.

SPEAKER_00: 8:50

And I wanted to take the opportunity to play a little bit of Kenny Jensen's record he put out in 1964 called Boxcars. And on this record, he's playing saxophone, lead saxophone, and he wrote this song and then uh took it into the studio and recorded with some musicians. Just to give you a little slice of Donnie's brother, my other uncle, Kenny Jensen. So, as you can tell from the stories from Donnie, his older brother, a very accomplished, successful musician, completely derailed his career as a musician due to his drug usage. And as most addicts understand, at some point getting high takes over any need for work or anything else, even though you have that ability and you can do that. But as Donnie described very well, even the most talented people can derail their lives, as we've seen from the people who over the years have died. The Tom Petties and Prince and musicians of all kinds have died over the years, and certainly they were dying at a uh at a rate in the 60s as well. So we're gonna hear more about Donnie's own struggles with addiction and how it kind of derailed his life as well when we get back to Donnie. Your usage of substances, it was part of your life when you were younger. It was part of your life when you were getting older. Did it did it negatively impact your life?

SPEAKER_01: 12:42

Oh, I I would say so. It it really started negatively when I went to Hood River because that's when I got into cocaine and methamphetamine. Um small towns, small towns are notorious for that, you know. And I was still playing music and I was in restaurant management. Now, I'm not a management person. I I, you know, make a much better employee than a manager.

SPEAKER_00: 13:03

Um management, especially is it uh Hood River that's in you're in Oregon at that time, right?

SPEAKER_01: 13:10

Okay. Hood River was the wind windsurfing capital of the world. And at that time, they were just getting recognized for that while World of Sports would be up there and doing everything. Um, the pressures, I think, of going into restaurant management drove me to drinking and to doing drugs. And uh, in fact, most of the managers, I would buy coke from some of the assistant managers, and then of course I would know where to get coke for them and stuff. So I found that there was a lot more drug uses just in management, um, and especially the food service management. The one guy when I was managing for Sherries, he drank, he would go off to uh to what we would call a cash and carry United Grocers. And on his way there, he picked up a six-pack and he would drink it. He was up in the Dallas. So he was at Hood River, so it was about you know a 45-minute drive up and back, and then he's in the store. He would drink that whole thing, and by the time he gets back, you could smell it on him. And when he drank, he got mean. He got real mean. Um, and I remember when Sherri's fired him, then they made me the manager, and he showed up one night drunk, and he had his wife with him, and he was starting to abuse her. And when I asked him to leave, he started getting abusive towards me. So I just went and immediately called the Hood River police and had him removed. And when the Hood River Police showed up, he got abusive towards them. Oh, that's interesting. Um, and there was a bit of a scuffle, and then they finally got him out, and I never saw him again after that. I and I started playing in a band, and we were pretty popular. So I left the restaurant management finally at Sherri's. I I just gave up on them too. And I started playing with a couple guys, and we were pretty popular, and we called ourselves Pressure, and we got to know a lot of the drug dealers. Uh New York Dave. He he had the best coke, but there was another girl, her name was Julie, and uh she really liked us as a band. And we were kind of a uh, you know, kind of helped her sell her stuff. So I was actually on uh the list. Uh somebody told me that that you need to get out of town because the FBI are getting ready. They were wanting to get in touch with me because I was not the main supplier, but I was at Julie's a lot. I was doing a lot of MFM enemy. Um, and I was on the list of that they were going to probably try and arrest me. You're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00: 15:26

Yeah, because you can leave you can lead to somebody that's bigger than you. So let's pick him up and squeeze him.

SPEAKER_01: 15:33

And uh and uh boy, there are times I remember I I remember I let a guy, a friend of mine, borrow my car because he he knew where to get some. So he left me at a restaurant for eight hours. I sat there waiting for him to come back with my car. He finally shows up with my car coming in, and I can see him parking, and behind him is the cop with his lights going. And uh, but he let him go. And uh so yeah, it started causing trouble for me, big time trouble.

SPEAKER_00: 16:02

Um and so so when you're playing it, and this is something I was kind of curious about because I I I played too, and uh that's a common thing that I hear even today with my clients who are musicians. It's part of the culture, it's it's it's almost like it's expected. If you're the the the guy is not using drinking something, it's like this doesn't make sense. This doesn't you don't fit. Yeah. So was there that pressure to to use to because that's part of it, or was it just something you just took on because you were in that environment?

SPEAKER_01: 16:35

Well, and you know, I think it was both. Um, you also wanted to look cool, you wanted to be, you know, you didn't want to be taught less of. So, and also when you're playing gigs, you know, you've got people that just naturally want to get you high. Um, and even when you're a band, we rented a uh old school room out of the old schoolhouse up in a place called Parkdale, which is around Hood River. Um, that and there was no more school. So it was cheap. It was like a hundred bucks a month, and we could rehearse as loud as we wanted to. The janitor that took care of that place was also, he was also a coke dealer. And so he would know when we would be rehearsing and stuff, he would come in, take a picture off the wall, and just start lining up coke. And uh, you know, I remember those days. Uh, because that's you know, I that's where I got my DUI. And um, then when I had my DUI, I didn't quite finish paying for it. So I was constantly getting pulled over by the Hood River police, too, you know, all the time. They knew my car. And it's not good when the police know your car. Uh so you know, and all that basically because I left management and went into playing music and just kind of just uh kind of overdid it. But we were popular, we played a lot of kids.

SPEAKER_00: 17:52

If you had not been doing, you know, massive amounts of drugs or or maybe any, do you think you would have gone a different direction and continued playing? Because honestly, I uh that's one of the things that my childhood I remember about you um when I was younger was like how incredibly talented you actually everybody in your family was, but you and Ronnie um used to entertain me just because you could play and you could play multiple instruments. You're very talented. You do you think that would have changed? I mean, being a musician is a hard, it's a hard life anyway. It's hard to make money doing it. But do you think that that that derailed that?

SPEAKER_01: 18:25

Yes, I think I'm fortunate that I didn't make it and make a lot of money because I probably wouldn't be alive right now. I probably would have been one of the dead ones. Uh so many of them do, and they're still dying. Um, whereas, you know, do you want to be so successful that your career kills you? And it's it's it's it's hard, yeah. Uh, because it's also fun and it can be fun, but at the same time, it can get to be where you just don't want to play anymore if you're playing the same thing every night. I I saw Jimi Hendrix, one of the uh videos of him when he finally just collapsed on stage, and it was just he made such a fool of himself when he was so stoned, so drunk, and whatever he was on. And he just finally was trying to sing, and he just looked at everybody and he just said something like, You're all a bunch of freaks, and he was down. They came and then they picked him off the stage and he died. I think it was a couple of months later. It was uh a gig that I'd heard about, and everybody told that he just went out and he just uh made such a yeah, just uh uh and I don't know if of too many of the Jim Morrison, you know, from the doors, yeah, uh had gone through the same kind of thing, just being so wiped out and drunk on stage. And of course, they're they're all dead. Uh Janice Joplin and uh you know who would have been me. Yeah, yeah, the 27 Club. Yeah. But you've got the money, the dealers seek you out. You can buy an endless amount. I remember you know, Elton John talking about it too, because he's totally straight now, I guess. Yeah, he doesn't do anything. Right. Um, and uh of course I don't listen to him anymore. I don't know if that's why. But just that, you know, you can't go to bed, you can't if you know you've got any drugs left, you have to finish them. And then you always hate that feeling when they're gone.

SPEAKER_00: 20:10

Anthony Keatis said something very similar to that in his book Scar Tissue, um, from the Red Hat Chili Peppers. Yeah, they're and they're their terrible uh addiction to heroin and actually all any drug, he and flea, uh all of them, and and just the tragedy of of that. And everybody wants a piece of you, everybody wants to be with you, everybody wants to be you, they want to be around you because you have this talent. And um unfortunately, music is also the thing that uh is something that is included in like parties and having a good time, right? So if you're getting hungry, you're getting drunk, there's music playing probably somewhere, you know, you got music in the background, and if you can produce that music from an instrument or your voice or whatever your your instrument is, it's like, hey, let me gift you, let me gift you this, you know, or hey, I want to be with you because this is cool, and and it ends up in utter destruction. And uh so the world lost a talent of the gifting of music with you um because of that. I don't know if it, you know, people who have special talents but end up in a in the realm of of using, you know, it it can not just kill you, but it can kill your your desire to to produce this magical thing that you have, or or it can just make it so you can't do it anymore.

SPEAKER_01: 21:30

Um yeah, that's what they uh they say about Jimmy Page. He he can't write music anymore, um, probably because of the amount of heroin he used. Um he was uh pretty bad, uh, along with uh guys like Eric Clapton and then those guys, you know, really bad heroin addicts. I heard Ginger Baker, he was a drummer for Cream, yeah, talking about the only way he could quit was to move out of the the region he was in. You know, he was in Europe, so I guess he moved to like South Africa just to get away from the heroin and it followed him there. You know, eventually he he was able to connect there. So you know, you can even move completely out of the country you're in and it it can still find you, yeah. It can still, you know, cause problems.

SPEAKER_00: 22:15

So I there's a uh there's a young guy, his name is Billy Strings. I don't know if you know who he is, but he's a um flat pick bluegrass player, uh guitar player and singer, songwriter guy. He's an incredibly talented musician. He melds bluegrass with other genres in his music, like he'll break into a uh a Hendrix tile uh psychedelic type thing in the middle of a song and then come back out of it. Uh amazingly talented as a very young man, but I also know that he um uses a lot of marijuana and uh some of his songs are related to uh you know heroin or crystal math. And I see that kind of talent and I see that age, and I see the the the the him playing in in these massive concerts, and I really fear for this guy, um, because I you know, him being surrounded by people that are as you're describing. And I just fear that that will be his fate, is that he ends up you know, just at some point just completely losing it and may not come out of it. You know, the other musicians that we see, Nikki Six and and the guys from Motley Crue, and you know, how they just barely made it out, and then the the fatalities that we see of you know uh Prince and um you know the others that have just overdosed and died, and it's and it's sad. Um it's a sad thing. Um when you lose that. The one the one person that I think in the music industry that's kind of interesting is um Stevie Ray Vaughn, because he died because he he you know helicopter crashed. Unfortunately, he was one year sober and then he died. The alcoholism and it was really bad for him, struggled with it really badly. And then he I I I I I think that he um he became a Christian and he got sober, and then he dies in a helicopter crash. But he was a guy who made it out and uh shouldn't have, based on what I've read and and understand about him and his lifestyle at the time. So I think if you have if you have something that's desirable and it it tends to attract attention, can be um both a blessing and a curse. Um and I I yeah that's the one thing about Kenny that that always kind of resonates with me is that um massive talent, massive problems, and lots of drugs and eventually took him out. Um not not the drugs, but the you know, just took it took his career away, basically. And and uh, you know, my own it's funny, I had my my DUI was uh about three years before yours. Um and uh, you know, my usage, I never did drugs, but my alcohol usage, you know, almost took me out. I think when we struggle with it and we struggle in our lives, it's difficult to understand the depth of despair and tragedy we go through. I mean, you and I are talking about our lives and and your life, and you know, there's anecdotal things that are kind of humorous and funny because we got out of it or we survived it or whatever. But really the tragedy is tragedy. That's it, that is what it is, it's tragedy and the things that you go through that you didn't really have to, but you did. Um perhaps makes you more insightful, gives you a little more understanding of people or humanity or your place in life or whatever, but at what cost? You know, how much did you lose with your usage and how badly did it damage you? Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 25:36

Well and it's hard to say you know what the answer is, because we we still don't have it, and it's been going on for I'd say centuries, because I think you know, if you were to go back to the 19th to 18th centuries, you're gonna find that there's uh addiction problems there, but just because of the the time and there's less people. But uh why is it still going on? Why does it, you know, we can't seem to stop it.

SPEAKER_00: 25:58

And so, like in the rooms when we listen to people speak, we learn from those stories, as I have learned, and I hope you've learned too, about the tragedies and the loss that can happen with addiction and what it can take away from you. So I want to thank Donnie for sharing his story and uh also sharing the stories of my other one of my other uncles, Kenny. And um unfortunately Kenny died from lung cancer a number of years ago and uh he he somehow also was a survivor from all the craziness that he engaged in and all the drugs that he took. He still was able to survive. But you know what? The generational curse gets passed down from generation to generation until you take a stand as I have and put a stop to it. And as uh Donnie has too in his sobriety. And uh it's never too late. You know, we're both old and we're happy at this point in our lives. So thanks, Donnie, for talking about your story and sharing. Just like we do when we go into the rooms. Uh-huh. When we listen to a speaker uh in the AA rooms, NA rooms, we listen to wisdom. And when people are spitting out wisdom, we can learn from that, as I hope you have with this episode of Doc Shock, your addiction lifeguard. I look forward to having more guests on in the coming weeks, and uh maybe hear some more stories from Donnie as well. So that's it for this episode of Doc Shock, your victim lifeguard. I hope you've learned something. I know I did, at least I did personally. But hey, you are trapped by addiction of your stuff. Wait, don't forget me, five stars, right now, 40 chapter mean, talk to shock the purpose on 12.95. What's up? Questions about the 1252, 2017 always these episodes are life back together. So if you are at the point where you are using it, please get help. So until next time, this is Doc Doc. You're Dr. LifeGuards and speak out.