Whenever there’s talk of the Grateful Dead in media there’s also often the inclusion (implicitly or explicitly) of talk about drugs. This type of talk perpetuates a boring stereotype about Deadheads. 

I’ve never heard enough discussion in the Dead community or in the media about the wrecking ball of drugs. I’ve never heard enough talk about how Jerry died while he was trying to get clean. Never heard enough talk about Pigpen dying from the bottle. Never heard enough talk about Brent dying of drugs. Never heard enough talk about Vince dying with his body full of drugs. Who discusses Phil acquiring Hepatitis C presumably while briefly using needle drugs and continuing to destroy his liver with wine? Who talks about Keith Godchaux dying in a car wreck after a night of partying? Of course drugs were mentioned in the news articles at the time of their deaths, and in some of the biographies, but why is that commonality among the founders of the Dead community so quickly glossed over? so quickly forgotten? Actually in Phil Lesh’s autobiography he does say, “The irony was undeniable: Drugs had helped create our music together, and now drugs were isolating us and tearing us from one another and our own feelings, and starting to kill us off.”

What about the next generation, people like John Mayer? why don’t we celebrate more his sobriety? There’s a video online where he admits putting down the bottle for good six years ago in order to give his art 100% effort.

When I was using drugs and alcohol regularly, I was always defensive and didn’t want to hear anything that was not reinforcing the idea that drugs, especially weed, is indispensable for a Deadhead. But again, this insistence on the namedropping of drug use seems so trite, amateur and unflattering to me now.

I saw Dead & Company in July 2023 for 2 nights on their “Final Tour” at The Gorge in Washington. When I was sweating at the Gorge with my family including my 12 year old daughter, I attended my first Wharf Rats meeting. I was on a grassy hill at set break with 50 or so heads listening to their stories of strength, struggle, thankfulness and clarity as they passed the yellow balloon talking stick. We were in that beautiful circle glittering in a sea of drug use. I felt that this was my new family and they looked just like any other Deadhead except they all made some choice , some choice toward sustainability and clean living and who knew it could be true, they still loved the Grateful Dead.

The Wharf Rats are a group of Grateful Dead fans who have chosen to live drug and alcohol free. The group formed in the early 1980s and is named after the Grateful Dead song “Wharf Rat”. The song tells the story of a wino named August West who chooses alcohol over everything else. The Wharf Rats wanted to create a safe space for Deadheads who wanted to enjoy the music without the influence of drugs or alcohol.

The Wharf Rats began as friendships between Deadheads who were bonded by the Grateful Dead music and their mutual recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Some members feared disclosing their status as Deadheads at AA and NA meetings. They also had to be very vigilant at Dead shows. The Wharf Rats have a combined at least 100 years of sobriety and have attended more than 1000 Dead shows.

We keep saying Jerry’s been dead almost 30 years. We keep celebrating the new sounds and new energy and how the music never stops. When will our thinking about the desperate necessity of drugs as it relates to the Dead change? Who will be the ones to drive this change? Will any of the old guard step up?

If you look for for it, you can see that yes, some in the old guard will stand up. Nancy Pelosi was recently in an LA Times article talking about being a clean Deadhead. Besides Nancy Pelosi, and all the Wharf Rats, I am now also a sober, drug-free Deadhead. Besides writing passive aggressive emails to David Gans, or being annoyed by media coverage of the Dead, or enduring endless deadheads bragging about drug use like a teenager desperately seeking clout, what can I do?…oh yes, I’m a poet. I can write a poem.

So please enjoy this poem below where I reflect on drugs and rock and roll, and drugs and being a father and drugs in other ways. When you talk to people who use drugs about being free from drugs they say you are being “preachy”; I ran with this and wrote the whole poem using the diction of the church:

Last Rites of a Shook Monkey

for the Wharf Rats

If this is preaching, it’s from the pulpit Jerry built

in rehab before his last breath. 

If this is preaching, it’s for those who reached 

between the feet 

to pull the plug 

from Jim Morrison’s tub. 

If this is preaching, it’s for the families 

of the six who die 

deaths of despair each day 

in my state. It’s for those 

sons and daughters 

cleaning out their parent’s houses, 

smashing in trash bins 

secret stashes.

If this is preaching, it comes down 

from the altar of fear. Fear my daughter 

will get hooked like me, age 15. 

If this is preaching, it must be 

the beer commercial 

between the liquor scene.

If this is preaching, I must be 

the battery acid bubbling 

from the megaphone 

of Big Alcohol in the boardroom 

praying you keep 

poisoning yourself 

“responsibly”.

If this is preaching, I’m the mock 

funeral for the Summer of Love. 

I’m the casket paraded 

down The Haight. I’m the buzzcut 

riding clean behind cowboy Neil Cassidy — 

isn’t the point of LSD 

to see something you can believe?

No, this ain’t preaching, 

I got ordained by my dealer, 

got this smug tone from the plug, 

got my weed card 

in the parking lot of Sonic. 

I pass-pass-coughed the chronic, 

I collapsed my lungs on hydroponic – 

I return it all to sender, 

back to my budtender.

If this is liturgy, it’s from the lips 

of the mockingbird who sits 

atop the ATM, 

who knows your PIN.

If this is communion, it’s the water 

bruised faceless from the wine. 

If this is eulogy, it’s me moving 

through my excuses.

If this is lecture, who’s to blame 

for your dismay? Even Bob Marley 

says you’re running and your running 

and your running away, but you can’t 

run away from yourself. 

If this is a sermon, it’s what burns 

between every line of Bukowski. 

It’s what I’d say in my mind all mousey 

hiding high from my family.

If this is sermon, trust me, I earned it: 

every car seat until now 

my cherry’s burned it. 

Visine, Clear Eyes, breath mints, 

every cover up — I worked it.

If this is sermon, the Yellow Submarine of bile 

can’t break the surface — but naw, ya’ll, that’s a lie, 

that’s fatalistic, to break the spell 

you don’t need no rock and roll mystic, 

or delphic oracle, you just need to hear me — 

addiction’s treatable.

If this is religion, the burning bush 

snuffs the bowl, and baseless bravado 

lies at the bottom of every bottle, 

and every bong hit bounces 

your locus of control 

from the wake and vape 

bistro of your brain 

so convincingly, so 

insistently — please don’t miss this, 

I used to think booze and weed 

made me free, now I see 

there’s nothing free 

about a monkey, on that there’s no 

bustin’ me, claws on your tired 

shoulders diggin’ in — Dry January?! 

that’s no means to an end, 

that’s extending a leash 

to a fair-weather friend.

If this is miracle, it’s thuribles 

inhaling smoke, suffocating 

those buzzing coals — hold a hit 

long enough, it holy ghosts.

If this is born again, it’s Sylvia Plathian, as in 

poems are a way back from the dead.  

If this is confession, I’m an alcoholic 

and a fiend. Before those labels 

I had no spine — now owning those words 

my blueprint of inner smile.

If this is antiphonal, if you work it,

it works.

If this is beatific vision, it’s the first trickle 

trickling past the cul of my former me 

in order to form a whole new sea.