‘Be good to yourself.’ NC musicians confront substance abuse, mental health in industry [The Charlotte Observer]
He was tired. Tired of seeing his friends in the music industry struggle with substance abuse. In some cases, and in the case of his former bandmate, addiction ultimately led to their deaths.
“I’ve lost…” Bumgardner paused to count aloud: “One, two, three, four friends to suicide, at least another half-dozen to overdoses, and came awful close to the same fate myself. I’m four years sober.”
Bumgardner, a 66-year-old bass player who lives in
But the music world also came with its perils. Bumgardner and the other young people he met on the road were making just enough money to survive. Most of the venues they played in were bars, where substances like alcohol and drugs — and abuse of these substances — were common.
His former bandmate died because he “drank himself to death,” Bumgardner said.
“We’ve got to do something about this,” Bumgardner told his friend and bandmate
From that conversation came an effort to help other musicians dealing with substance abuse and mental illness through an initiative called Be Good to Yourself. Bumgardner and Slater decided to raise money for the program by recording a benefit album.
Over a year in the making, the album, also titled “Be Good to Yourself - The Music,” is slated to come out
The album, initially envisioned as 10 songs, grew into an album of 27 songs with performances from dozens of collaborators, almost all from
The roster of musicians includes
In the music industry, musicians are often the ones to help each other out when it feels like no one else will. With Be Good to Yourself, the collaborators say they hope to change that — to not only raise enough money to fund mental healthcare and counseling for some musicians, but to shed light on the ways that musicians have struggled during the pandemic and beyond.
During a time when so many musicians were struggling to make ends meet, and perhaps struggling with addiction and mental illness themselves, Bumgardner said it’s incredible that so many worked on the album for free. But it’s not surprising.
“You wanna know how great musicians are?” he said. “There you go. These are people who are out of work, and they’re still doing it for nothing, to try to help fellow musicians.”
‘A dangerous business’
Before coming up with the idea for a benefit album, Bumgardner, Slater and other musicians had already been talking about how they could help their fellow musicians. They knew anecdotally that overdoses and suicides were widespread in the industry.
“The music business is a dangerous business,” Bumgardner said. “As beers after a gig turned into cases of beer after a gig, turned into whiskey after a gig, turned into suicide, that was a little too much to be able to sit around and not do something about.”
The data backs that up. A 2018 study by the
As gig performers, many musicians don’t have health insurance. Many make so little that they struggle to make rent or pay for other necessities — and the idea of being able to afford medical help for addiction or mental illness is laughable to some.
Then, the pandemic began, when instances of mental illness like anxiety and depression rose across the country. With lockdowns, independent musicians lost the ability to make a living off of touring and performing.
To help provide
Be Good to Yourself and the
“You’re less likely to succeed at beating an addiction if you’re just in
In the midst of a pandemic, the benefit album felt even more urgent, though, with restrictions on gathering, the logistics were tricky. The four musicians recorded primarily at
Pandemic struggles
For Virginia, this was a breakthrough. She felt like the music career she had dreamed of for so long was finally on its way. Then, venues announced that they were cancelling shows because of the coronavirus. Shows were cancelled for two weeks, at first. Then another two weeks. Then another.
When all of Virginia’s shows through June were cancelled, she knew there was no end in sight.
“It felt like I was staring into a black pit,” she said. “It was just soul-crushing. I fell into a really deep depression.”
Virginia suffers from diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder, major-depressive disorder, and complex-post traumatic stress disorder. Her symptoms worsened during the pandemic, she said, in part because she could no longer perform and share her music.
The people behind Be Good to Yourself want to provide support to those struggling in the industry, even when they’re not in the middle of a pandemic.
For many, that support can be life-saving. Virginia, for example, credits the treatment she receives for her mental illnesses for helping her cope with the pandemic’s effects.
She knows how easy it is to fall into substance abuse and addiction as a musician — she plays most of her gigs at bars and breweries. And if she wasn’t receiving treatment for her mental illnesses, she thinks she’d be more likely to abuse the substances she’s frequently around.
But not all musicians have access to that level of care. Because she’s younger than 26, Virginia is still able to receive health insurance through her parents, which covers therapy and medication. She also keeps a day job so she’ll be eligible for coverage once she ages out of her parents’ insurance.
Musicians who don’t have insurance and can’t afford mental health care are left to grapple with their mental health on their own.
“I think I would find other unhealthy ways to cope and self-medicate if I didn’t have access to treatment,” Virginia said. “If not for my treatment, my story would definitely be much different and more tragic.”
A culture of dependency
Because employers are the most common source of health insurance, independent contractors are left to buy their own plans or go without. And for those without insurance, coping and self-medicating can include using substances like drugs and alcohol.
When Bumgardner was on tour, he said it was harder not to partake in drinking and smoking than to just participate.
“When you’re working four to five sets a night, that’s what you do — you have a couple of beers,” Bumgardner said. “And after you’re done, you’re all wound up, you stay up all night, you dabble in drugs, you drink, and that becomes a way of life for a long time.”
“When you’re on the road, you drink and smoke and do drugs, and it’s a blast, because you sort of feel like it’s your obligation to do that, like — on the road!” he said. “If you don’t do those things, you have to go to the bar hours before you start the show, so what do you do?”
For many musicians, this way of life seems sustainable when they’re young. But as Bumgardner got older, he said it began to take a toll on his health, both physically and mentally.
“As you get older, people start paying the price — the suicides where they just couldn’t see a way out,” Bumgardner said. “And even though, in some cases, they might have had insurance, they wouldn’t seek help because of the stigma associated with addiction and mental illness.”
Howie said he realized he needed help a few years ago, when doctors told him he had a tumor in his lung and an enlarged liver, both connected to his drinking and smoking. Howie, then 46, knew he had to get sober, though it took him years to do so.
Quitting an addiction is notoriously difficult. And while there are free resources like
The pandemic, Howie said, has made it both harder and easier to stay sober. During the pandemic, many have turned to alcohol and substances to deal with stress. A study published in 2020 in the
“I wouldn’t have wanted to try to get sober right when the pandemic hit,” Howie said. “I had some friends call me and tell me they were struggling with it.”
But staying home also meant being away from venues centered around alcohol. As live shows resume, Howie expects that it’ll be hard to return to those spaces.
“A lot of my coming shows are in places where they’ll be serving alcohol, so we’ll see,” he said. “I’m sure that won’t be easy, but I’m used to it not being easy.”
A larger problem
Without insurance, musicians struggle to get any kind of healthcare and can ignore their health problems. That’s what happened with Garges, who for a long time would do whatever it took to not go to the doctor when he thought something might be wrong. He would look up symptoms on the internet, ask friends and family for advice, or just ignore pain.
“I didn’t have insurance, and I used to be avoidant when it came to health stuff, because it was — ‘I’m afraid to go, I’m afraid to have to pay for a doctor’s visit because I’ve got this pain in my knee that may lead to another doctor’s visit that’s gonna cost more money,’” he said.
For many uninsured musicians, experiences like Garges’ are common. The difficulty of getting insurance as a musician is a systemic problem that many musicians interviewed for this story linked to larger problems with the insurance industry in
The Affordable Care Act, some musicians said, was an improvement when it was passed in 2010, but still far from perfect.
Garges was able to get health insurance through the ACA after being uninsured for many years. It’s been a relief, he said, but it’s still “a stretch financially” to pay for his own plan, Garges said.
Before the ACA, Howie said he worked odd jobs to make sure he always had insurance. He then enrolled in ACA, which he said was “great for a few years there.” Still, Howie recalled he once had a copay that was over
Because independent musicians often make so little money — a typical band can expect to make the same amount of money playing a gig at a bar in 2021 as they did in the 1970s, according to Slater — insurance and healthcare are simply often “out of the question,” he said.
Be Good to Yourself hopes to mitigate that cost for some musicians across the state.
The price of sponsoring one counseling session a week for a year for one musician is over
The organization expects to start small with a handful of people, eventually growing the project so more people can be sponsored, said
“We’d like to sponsor as many musicians as we can,” Allen said.
With the expansion of the SIMS foundation into
“But I think when this thing hits, we’re going to have more applications than we know what to do with,” Allen continued.
Crowdfunding efforts to pay for healthcare or other necessities are common in the music industry. Musicians help each other out, as Bumgardner said.
Allen recalled seeing countless social media posts from local musicians who were struggling both financially and mentally at the beginning of the pandemic.
Virginia said she’s also seen crowdfunding efforts for musicians struggling with issues like finances or illness.
“But it’s a Band-Aid for a bullet wound,” she said. “If some people are able to raise a certain amount of money to help a handful of people, that’s great, of course. But I’m still on my healing journey, and I’ve been receiving treatment for six years — that’s six years of insurance, six years of therapy, six years of medication.”
Slater noted that insurance is inaccessible to so many because of the system used in
“One of the great faults of insurance in this country is that it’s such a monetized consumer entity,” he said. “It’s so expensive, and most independent musicians won’t be able to afford it.”
Virginia said she hopes there comes a time when people have access to health insurance that allows them to seek treatment for illnesses, physical or mental, without worrying about whether they can afford to do so.
But until the health insurance industry changes, musicians will continue to help each other out. And as the lengthy track list of “Be Good to Yourself” shows, there’s no shortage of musicians who will be there for each other.
“If there’s a chance that one person benefits from this, we’re good,” Slater said. “If there’s one person out there who benefits from this, it’s all worth it.”
Details
For information on Be Good to Yourself and how to buy the benefit album, go to begoodtoyourselfmusic.com or facebook.com/Bgoodtoyourselfnow.
©2021 The Charlotte Observer. Visit charlotteobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
These are the top 10 most stolen vehicles in America, report finds
What Costs Can Unvaxxed Workers Cause For Their Employers?
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News