"Knowing when and how to disobey is a higher order skill than to just obey."

"It took moral courage and an act of intelligent disobedience to go around the hierarchy to the press to report the misuse of power coercing them to lie and alter reports. Compared to Snowden, though they blew the whistle, they did so largely within the system. Their actions were vindicated by society. At the time, it took moral courage to risk losing their job and status, and it took intelligent disobedience to get results in a moral and legal manner."

"the military has “created an environment where it is literally impossible to execute to standard all that is required.” Their solution to changing the culture is to recognize the Army has a problem, exercise restraint, prioritize what can
be done instead of lying about what was done, and lead truthfully. This requires moral courage of the leadership to step forward, risking loss of job and status by going against the culture."

"Those who are just obeying orders and conforming to the culture are just as culpable as those giving the orders. More people need to come forward to decry and stand against
immoral, unethical, or illegal behavior, or just plain wrong orders that will cause avoidable failures and harm. Corporate culture has a tremendous influence on corporate
behavior. New employees to an organization quickly determine the business norms."

"The organizational culture becomes the standard to which their behavior is held and whether they are retained, promoted, fired, or voluntarily leave. Thus, many employees will follow a separate set of ethical standards at work than they will at home, thereby living a form of corporate cultural
ethical relativism"

she understood that telling the truth would get her labeled a quitter. She knew she was bucking against the ingrained culture and the condemnation would come because she’s dealt with this dynamic her whole career.

Absolutely nothing is wrong with the athletes who power through. They deserve the glory. Nothing is quite so stirring of the spirit as watching one beat the odds, conquer the obstacles and come out victorious.

At the same time, the difficulty of what Biles did is not lost. The valley where one finds their frailty is low. But she didn’t run. Instead, she went toe-to-toe. With disappointment. With frustration. With failure. With the frightening prospect of being transparent. With the reality that, on this occasion, she was not that one. She endured it all and did what she thought was the right thing.

there appear to be qualities shared by the 27-ers that stand them apart from many other deceased young pop musicians, which may go some way to understanding how this club entered the pop culture psyche. These qualities include exceptional talent, the contribution of groundbreaking innovations in their musical genre, intense psychological pain, and a squalid death at their peak. Many members have become a "cult figure".

Many found it difficult to find help that was catered to their specific needs SO mental help needs to be more advertised and accessible. (issuu.com)

struggling with drugs for mental health reasons OR because they felt uncreative (thom yorke)

MBCT (Mindfulness based cognitave therapy)

In the wake of these tragic events, there seems to be an increased focus on mental health in music. Other popular musicians, such as Billie Eilish, Bruce Springsteen, Katy Perry, and Kendrick Lamar, among others, have openly discussed their personal struggles with mental health in efforts to raise awareness and decrease stigmatization.

Further, several nonprofit organizations (i.e. MusiCares, Backline, Music Minds Matter) were founded to provide resources to musicians and crew members struggling with their mental health. These resources include referrals to mental health professionals, online support groups, and psychoeducational materials on the importance of sleep, diet, and exercise.

Pathological accommodation is a way of being that occurs when an individual is organized around the needs of another. This occurs in relational systems in which caregivers are unable to provide an attuned response, or misattune, to an individual’s affective needs. With repeated misattunements, the individual begins to adhere to their caregiver’s needs to maintain necessary attachment ties and, in doing so, neglecting their own needs. This way of being limits emotional experiencing as the individual has learned that certain needs and emotions are unwelcome. This results in increased psychological distress.

With this transition [amateur to professional] comes intense demand and pressure from the industry. Professional musicians are at the mercy of grueling tour schedules where they spend months away from loved ones, must be “on” at every performance to win over audiences, and are harshly judged on their creative output. All of this occurs within a notoriously fickle and competitive industry that often leaves the musician powerless. If you aren’t willing to do all the “right” things, the industry will find someone else that will. What’s more, even if you do all the “right” things, there is still no guarantee of success. This relational dynamic between musicians and the music industry, which refers to the ways in which industry personnel behave when they have power over musicians, is fertile ground for pathological accommodation and psychological struggle.

It is important to note that the dynamics of pathological accommodation in the music industry are not entirely unique to that industry. Across a variety of professional settings, employees navigate similar struggles in negotiating the competing drives of individual authenticity with organizational belonging. (LIKE INTELLIGENT DISOBEDIENCE!!!!!!!!)

Prior to streaming, musicians would make a significant portion of their income from sales of recorded

music (i.e., CDs, LPs). However, streaming platforms pay musicians very little for their music

(Prior, 2018) and have led to steep declines in musicians’ income (McKinna, 2014). Thus, we

may find ourselves wondering how today’s musicians are able to make a living from music? The

answer: live performance and touring.

To me this means that the followers of musicians need to understand that the artists are people too

Musicians are expected to preform consistently at the highest standard, 75% reported experiencing performance anxienty, 48% had a repetitive strain injury at some point, and 47% reported hearing problems. all of these have a serious impact on a musicians ability to work and earn. (jnnyg brace)

Many found it difficult to find help that was catered to their specific needs SO mental help needs to be more advertised and accessible.

“The classic image of a touring musician would seem counterintuitive to all we know about well-being,” says Isabella Goldie of the Mental Health Foundation. “Drinking in moderation, avoiding drugs, getting sufficient amounts of sleep, and having a support base of close friends and family nearby. These are the bonds that help keep you grounded ... It’s no surprise that some musicians struggle.”

"It's easy to let your mind and body slip into decay. For those with anxiety, hotel rooms are like prison cells

Mat Zo"

For many, the contrast between the highs of a successful show and the anti-climactic low that often follows can be hard to adjust to, a phenomenon that has been termed “post-performance depression’, or PPD. Mental health professional John C Buckner writes: “When the body experiences major shifts in mood, it is flooded with several different neurotransmitters, resulting in a biochemical release that leads to a feeling of ecstasy. After these moments the nervous system needs time to recalibrate itself to prepare for another release. After an exciting performance the body starts to balance out the level of neurotransmitters, and therefore it is not releasing the same level that caused the exciting feelings, resulting in the lingering sadness. In normal day-to-day life, biochemicals are released and rest/recovery follow, causing the typical ups and downs of life. In the case of PPD, the process is more extreme with higher highs and lower lows.”

Many of those surveyed by Help Musicians were reluctant to seek help. One anonymous artist said: “I feel guilty asking for help with something I should be able to deal with given the issues in question are part and parcel of the career path I’ve chosen.” But Nash says it’s important to know when to take a break. “I think I was probably overworked,” she says, reflecting on her early career. “I was doing huge tours and having two days off and then going out again. It burned me out.”

Is it viable, however, for an artist that isn’t Daft Punk to simply not tour? Beal, for one, thinks not. “If I could just stay home and record, I would, but it’s not financially feasible for a musician to do so these days.”

“When you’re young, people tell you that if you don’t do something it’s the end of your career. But it’s not. People are fragile. Our brains are fragile and you can only abuse them for so long. The sad thing is that some people can’t take themselves out of these situations. That’s when it is a manager’s responsibility to go ‘Hey, I think we need to take a break.’”

Nash says that the internet has had a positive effect, in giving younger musicians more control of their own careers. I suggest that social media also means today’s audiences see artists more as human beings – and are therefore more understanding when they cancel a show. Nash agrees: “I’ve seen fans be really loving if that happens, saying, ‘The most important thing is your health. We just want you to get better.’

“I would like to think that an artist’s mental health is taken into consideration more now,” says Nash. “We’ve had enough people die, quite frankly.”

There are a slew of factors taking their toll on artists, she says, from the monetary and emotional costs of being on the road to the pressure to get back to the way things functioned before pandemic lockdowns. And the burnout has followed in a big way.

[Touring is] literally crisis management. It’s all day, every day of crisis aversion. It’s literally like, “Oh, just pulled up to this show, and I lost my voice ‘cause I’m so fucking tired.” And then I have to disappoint all these people. “Oh, somebody’s plane didn’t arrive with our tour manager and all of our costumes” — it’s just literally nonstop. Everything’s fucked up. Then you go onstage, and you’re like, [screaming] “Hello!” to 30,000 people. … It’s a very different requirement energetically, spiritually, mentally to have to carry that night after night after night, five shows a week, at least.

if you’re not doing enough shows in your tour, then you’re not able to pay for the tour.

It’s when I went into a deep depression. I knew that we had to get through the touring of OK Computer in order to take a break, so I was really down. I was depressed at the time but my focus wasn’t on me. Thom was like that [also], so it was about getting Thom through it, being there for him.

When that finished I went home to Oxford. I was single, on my own, World Cup ​’98 summer… I was the lowest I’ve ever been. It was the irony as well – you’re at the top, that old cliché. Did loads of drugs [and] went full on into all the wrong things. And then that went through to Kid A.

It was hard, because I felt like my job was to keep everything going. I felt like being the mum of the band, making sure Thom was alright, but I was fucked. Thankfully I didn’t realise how depressed I was until we finished.

Were you on antidepressants?

No. I tried to have some therapy, but therapy was great for two days, then I’d feel shit for the next five. I could see how you could get into the dependency thing.

The thing I did get into around Kid A was this stuff called St John’s Wort [a herbal anti-depressant], which is fucking strong. Things were scary enough as it was. I was feeling so shit and in order to get through the day I would take St John’s Wort and smoke loads of cigarettes.

Kid A and Amnesiac were the paired albums where Radiohead ripped it up and started again. In reductive terms, that meant much less guitar. As one of the guitarists in the band, did you come close to thinking, ​“I need to walk away from this”?

Not really, no. The band was everything. I didn’t have a family, didn’t have kids. This was the be-all and end-all and had been since 1985, when we were at school together. It was the most important thing. But it was a whole period of supreme un-confidence. Feeling shit about myself, feeling unworthy, guilt… All that stuff.

What’s the closest the band has ever come to ending?

I don’t know whether there has been a closest time. I think [doing] the tracklisting of Kid A was really fraught. That felt like it could go either way, it could break. Like it would snap and that would be it. But we came in the next day and it was resolved.

THAT SEALED-IN FEELING nearly blew the band apart. Yorke came off the OK Computer tour convinced that Radiohead were in a gilded rut. He wanted extreme change at any price. O'Brien believes that included personal relationships.

Thom: "*starts laughing*

Ed: "Yeah, very. I think just in terms of how we are as a band. How we viewed things 3 or 4 years ago on tour. I remember it being a really dark time and we really did not enjoy touring America at all. In fact, it was a fucking nightmare. Because we suddenly found ourselves in big arenas at the end of the tour. And we were not in the right frame of mind to be doing that. But we did it. We realised we had to come back and play. But it's frightening. I don't really think any of us enjoyed that last American tour at all. I mean, if I'm honest, there were moments... But now it's so different, we're actually enjoying it.

Gideon: "Did having such a bad experience on the OK Computer tour scare you from touring again?

Thom: "Yeah. Me especially. Just the touring thing, everything. To me, it was a long series of having to deal with these ghosts in my cupboard and they were all coming out one by one. The touring thing especially. I really didn't think that I could deal with it... At all. I just didn't think I could cope. And I can't really explain to you why. Other than, as Ed was saying, at the end of doing OK Computer, and we were doing these really stupidly big gigs. Uhm. It was like, I dunno. Like there was suddenly 40,000 people in here taps head, and I'd left. Haha. And now I don't have that. Now it's like "Hi, nice to meet you, thanks very much.." That's it.

Through his life and music, Cornell exhibited and corroborated 3 separate fundamental axioms of suicidology [7]: first, May is the peak month for suicide in the northern hemisphere; second, mixed mood states carry a greatly increased risk of suicide; and third, the suicide risk is greatly increased when recovering from depression and mood turns mixed. Taken together, Cornell has left us with an inescapable, novel, important, and memorable hypothesis about suicide: the yearly suicide risk is greatest when winter turns to spring and there emerges a deadly coincidence of a mixed depressive state and a May photoperiod, i.e., the yearly suicide risk is greatest when a Black Hole Sun occurs in May.

In addition to illuminating the month of May as the peak of the seasonal suicide risk rhythm, Cornell also illuminates important aspects about mixed depressive states, which, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-Fifth Edition (DSM-5) [16], are characterized by a full major depressive syndrome in conjunction with 3 or more manic symptoms (e.g., euphoria, insomnia, and agitation), and are well known to be associated with a greatly increased risk of suicide [7]. Controversy exists, however, regarding how many and what kind of depressive and manic symptoms may combine to constitute a nosologically and pathophysiologically meaningful entity of the mixed mood state [17-19]. Interestingly, mixed mood states are also most likely to occur in the spring, at the height of the seasonal suicide risk rhythm [20-23]. Thus, while it is unknown whether Cornell’s depressions were ever formally diagnosed as mixed mood states, his description of the mixed mood state and its associated warping of one’s attitude towards suicide could not be more explicit in his not-so-vaguely suicidal song “Follow My Way” from his album with the undisguised and undoubtedly mixed title “Euphoria Mourning”

“The meltdown was when the small indie scene became an international scene,” he said. “We shared [TV] airtime and pages of magazines with what we considered to be the enemy — bands who were presented in a way that we knew we were against when we started out — so it was like, if you’re reading about Soundgarden and you turn the page and it’s Poison, are we the same?”

When asked about the benefits of touring he had this to say,

“I think there’s a benefit to touring a lot. It depends on who you are and what you’re trying to get out of it. Let’s use Metallica as an example. It was presented to Soundgarden that [Metallica] tours for two years off of every album. We always responded with, well we’re not!  The Soundgarden frontman continues, “Like, who would want to tour for two years? Then you look at what that did for them and it created super strong markets everywhere that you can go. But I don’t think the same thing is good for everybody.”

it was clear that something wasn’t right with the 52-year-old Cornell during the Fox performance. He often staggered back-and-forth across the stage, and seemed weak in his movements. Just one or two songs in, it was as if the energy had exited his body, and what was left was a shell of a man scrambling to do his job.

It's not that the nearly two-hour show itself was bad, but it seemed like Cornell wasn’t mentally present.

He missed words, sometimes in entire blocks, letting the crowd sing the parts of the songs he didn’t. Nobody complained; in fact, the audience of about 5,000 seemed to love it.

Cornell was visibly agitated at times. He walked off the stage for several minutes before playing “Been Away Too Long,” causing the band to start over and leaving them playing instrumentals to fill the gap. When he came back onstage, he made a “move it along” motion with his hand.

One line, which at the time seemed innocuous, sticks: “I feel bad for the next city,” Cornell said over the mic. The quote came just after mentioning that nothing could ever top Detroit. Now, it has a much deeper, heartbreaking meaning.

Reasons for starting “drugs of abuse” involve the performance enhancer model (enhance strength and endurance, fight pain, reduce weight) and the abuse and addiction model (reduce stress, boost confidence, relieve craving) [6]. Many of these motives apply to celebrities as they are under constant pressure to perform and to appear healthy and productive. Opioids have a soothing effect on many of these issues. Therefore the risk for developing an addiction may be generally elevated for celebrities, especially in those with an increased prevalence of musculoskeletal pain

Most drug-related celebrity deaths occurred in the age range of 25 to 40 years

Celebrities deserve excellent healthcare, for their own good as well as for the sake of their followers. Physicians that care for celebrities should consider that celebrities may be at increased risk for substance abuse and addiction.

In the case of prescription opioids, the “Center of Diseases Control” guidelines should be complied with. If addiction is present, adequate treatment should be suggested. Facing pain, depression, stage fright and other existential issues is a challenge to many performing in the arts [4]. Doctors should be aware that neither intense suffering nor their intention to help does justify the use of prescription opioids in the absence of a clear medical indication. Thus they can prevent addiction in their celebrity patients and minimize negative public health effects for millions of their followers.

Thom: "The doctor came round at four o'clock, because every time you don't do a show, you have to get a doctor's certificate saying you are too sick to do a show, just like school, so you have a fucking sicknote. If you don't get the sicknote, you get sued for thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds. I needed this thing, but of course the doctor was paid for by the promoter. So the doctor turns up and he has two bags full of drugs - all with German names that I didn't understand. And he says take this, take that blah blah blah and I said no, no fucking way. I don't know what these things are and I am not taking them, you know. He says 'you're fine, you're fine to do the show' and I was like : I can't fucking speak, let alone sing. He said : 'oh well, I'll just inject you with steroids then and you'll be fine'. Because this is what they do, they inject steroids in you neck and I am not going to do that. So I was like: ok, so it's too late to cancel the show, the doctor won't give me a sicknote, I'm gonna have to go on and do this show, I don't have a choice. I'd gone on and do the show and three songs in, I collapsed. After weeks and weeks of this building up in my head, you know. It happened four times before that during the course of a 4 months tour that I was ill, same thing over and over again. Doctors paid for by promoters. Anyway, I just snapped.

DJ: "What is your worst habit?"

Thom: "My worst habit is drinking until I'm sick all over the bathroom, which I keep doing. You know people do that. Normally people do that every 5 years and go: oh God, I can't believe I did that. I'm still at the stage that you are when you are a teenager. I get so drunk that I can't speak anymore."

DJ: "Jonny, I'm noticing your wearing wrist support, too much guitar lately? You have a bandage on your guitar hand.

Jonny: "Yes, I have an injury that usually 40 year old typist get but I have and I'm 22 so there you go...

dozens of studies have clearly shown that mental disorders, particularly depressive disorders, are among the strongest risk factors for suicide attempts and suicide deaths

A prominent variant of the so-called third-wave approaches to psychotherapy is mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy is a group-based 8-week meditation exercise combined with cognitive behavioural techniques

it aims at focusing on the “here and now” in order to engage with momentary experience and to redirect attention whenever it has switched to distracting thoughts and worries.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy has been proven to significantly reduce relapse risk after remission of a depressive episode [22], [23], and also appears effective for acute phase treatment of various severity levels of current depression

Although MBCT originally was developed to prevent depressive relapse, it may be also suitable for patients with suicidal ideation and behaviour [31]. Williams and colleagues [32] propose that MBCT may help prevent recurrence of suicidal crises by targeting cognitive reactivity to sad mood in periods of remission. Cognitive reactivity is assumed to be a process by which small deteriorations in mood may reactivate cognitive patterns that were active in past episodes but hidden in remission [33]. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy may target cognitive reactivity by enabling people to adopt a different, more decentred relationship with their own thoughts, feelings and body sensations, thus preventing these experiences from launching a downward mood spiral that would otherwise have led to another suicidal crisis

The music industry reflects society and culture at large. Artists often draw inspiration from their personal experiences, including struggles with substance abuse. In this sense, the music industry may not be promoting drug use but rather providing a platform for artists to express their experiences and, in some cases, raise awareness about the dangers of addiction.

According to a report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), there were over 70,000 drug-related overdose deaths in 2020 alone. Of those, nearly 10% involved musicians or other people working in the music industry.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) reports that opioid abuse is particularly rampant among musicians and other members of the music industry. NIDA estimates that up to 40% of musicians struggle with opioid addiction at any time.

The unique pressures of being a musician can make it difficult to seek help for addiction. Addiction can be especially hard on musicians due to their hectic lifestyle and frequent travel.

Motivation for change is key in addressing substance misuse. Musicians may feel pressure from their peers or fans to continue using drugs or alcohol as part of their creative process or lifestyle.

Relapse is one of the biggest challenges those in recovery face during and after rehab. Cravings, stress, anxiety, and old acquaintances can all contribute to relapse.

Musicians who are not celebrities may experience financial constraints if they do not have health insurance or sufficient funds to pay for treatment out of pocket.

For these reasons and many more, musicians struggle alone without getting help — sometimes until it’s too late.