Anders Osborne is a talented singer, blues guitarist and songwriter from New Orleans. He was dependent on alcohol for years — and it nearly destroyed his career and family. Anders opens up about his struggles with addiction, explains how he got sober and shares songs about those experiences. He also talks about the role drugs and alcohol play in the music industry, and why he created a network to help other musicians in recovery stay clean while on tour.
Transcript
Vic Vela:
In three, two, one. How much were drugs and alcohol crucial to the New Orleans scene?
Anders Osborne:
Drinking is a big part of it and here in New Orleans, we have a very educated way of drinking all day. So what you do is you start, even if it's a brunch or a lunch and the luncheon goes on all day and then a little extra, little this, and you meet for drinks on the front porch. There's a culture around the drinking, so you're supposed to drink civilized for many, many hours.
Vic Vela:
This is Back From Broken from Colorado Public Radio, stories about the highest highs, the darkest moments, and what it takes to make a comeback. I'm Vic Vela. I'm a journalist, a storyteller, and a recovering drug addict. The guy you just heard from is Anders Osborne and he's going to tell you a wild, drug-fueled story that, frankly, I can relate to a lot. My friends used to call me the pharmacist because everywhere I went I had a ton of drugs on me. I'd snort coke or smoke crack in the car, then had to work like it was just totally normal behavior. Then I couldn't wait to do more drugs when I got home.
Vic Vela:
I live in Colorado, a state with high rates of addiction, depression and suicide. These things affect everyone. I'm really tired of looking at my Facebook feed and seeing news of another friend who overdosed or died by suicide. So this podcast is about comeback stories, not just from drugs, but that's where we're going to start.
Vic Vela:
I've been clean for five years now and when I hear songs like this about a person overcoming addiction, I pay attention. Anders Osborne is a songwriter and one of the country's best known blues guitarists on stages all over the world. He leans into the music. In a way, Anders Osborne has a typical story about a talented musician who got tangled up in drugs and alcohol, but his story isn't typical at all. He was born in Sweden and you could still hear the slightest trace of an accent, but he moved to New Orleans when he was young. Let's just say the city and its music culture and its drinking culture had a huge effect on him. What was your experience like with drugs and booze around that time when you were just kind of getting started?
Anders Osborne:
A lot of drinking. Not a bunch of cocaine, but there was cocaine and then there were prescription drugs, a lot of weed, mushrooms, dropped a little acid, and if you needed to, you would do some cocaine with the acid because you didn't want it to last only 11 hours. You needed another four.
Vic Vela:
Don't shortchange that buzz. No.
Anders Osborne:
Seriously, yeah. So, that was basically what we all did, and then a little heroin shows up and you smoke a little bit of that, but it was pretty innocent in the beginning.
Vic Vela:
To regular normal people who … that doesn't sound too innocent, right? But I understand what you're saying because I remember when I was doing all those drugs that you mentioned, they weren't really a problem for me because, like any drug addict, I remember a time in my life when drugs were fun and they weren't causing problems.
Anders Osborne:
Yeah, they were working. For a long time, they really did add not just the feeling you were looking for, but the dimension you were looking for. You wanted the connection between the architecture, the trees, and the other people and the weird dressing up. All that stuff, it all goes hand in hand. I think it's literally what they call a drug culture. The one thing that happened the more the career took off and the more the pressures kind of … I don't know, they just … they stepped up.
Vic Vela:
Anders' career began to take off in a serious way at this time. He was touring more and other artists recorded his songs like Keb' Mo', Jonny Lang, and Tim McGraw, who recorded this song that Anders co-wrote.
Vic Vela:
That track landed on the top of the country charts, which meant Anders had more income to spend on booze and drugs.
Vic Vela:
The roots of addiction often start well before you begin using. Anders points to some difficult times in his childhood. His parents divorced when he was young and Anders often felt like he didn't fit in with other kids. He says those experiences fueled his dependency on alcohol and other drugs, and that dependency started to get more serious. He remembers one particular binge that lasted five days.
Anders Osborne:
I had just met my wife now and we'd been out for many days. I woke up about five days into this run, and I had this kind of like a pair of karate pans or …
Vic Vela:
So you're getting drunk all weekend wearing karate pants? Who hasn't done that?
Anders Osborne:
Yeah, they're karate pants and I had no underwear underneath. So I asked my girlfriend at the time and I said, "Did I wear this?" She said, "Yep, the whole weekend. We rode cabs, we saw some of your friends, we scored, we did all kinds of stuff, and that's what you were wearing."
Vic Vela:
Oh, man. [crosstalk 00:06:37].
Anders Osborne:
Proud and loud.
Vic Vela:
Proud and … and this was for five days?
Anders Osborne:
Yeah, five days. Then I also asked, because I couldn't find my guitar, my electric guitar, which was kind of a big deal for me. It's a 1968 black Strat, that and the 62 Strat, both of them were gone.
Vic Vela:
Wow.
Anders Osborne:
Those guitars really meant a lot to me and to not know where they are or where they were and how they got lost or anything, that was my first indication that something's not right.
Vic Vela:
What do you remember about coming out of that blackout?
Anders Osborne:
I remember … I don't know. It's not despair, but to not be able to grasp at all what has happened for five days and to have no idea what I said or what I did and then all I know is I walk around naked for five days in public. I lost the two things that I value the most, professionally, and I have no idea what happened. None. It made me for the first time, I think, reflect over how many times stuff like that had happened. Just an endless amount of film started to play in my head.
Vic Vela:
The tape is playing the greatest hits, right?
Anders Osborne:
Yeah. The greatest hits. This started and I couldn't really see the whole tape at that time. It came later, but it started to play and I really freaked out and I said, "I have to stop. I really can't go on like this. This is a problem. I'm not like everybody else." I think that dawned on me that time for real. So I tried to quit.
Vic Vela:
I find this part of Anders' story really amazing. He stayed sober for months and he went through a lot of self reflection. Anders says he stopped playing live because he realized he was struggling with getting up in front of crowds and performing. The drugs had helped make that a lot easier for him and without them, he stepped away from live shows for a while. He says he stayed home, got into painting, and smoked a lot of cigarettes. Did you try to go through recovery at this time or was it cold turkey?
Anders Osborne:
No.
Vic Vela:
Okay.
Anders Osborne:
This was a cold turkey and white knuckling and like I said, isolation was pretty total. I didn't go anywhere, do anything. I just stayed home and painted the whole time.
Vic Vela:
Anders' life was exciting on a personal level. He'd gotten married and had two kids, but he and his wife also had a miscarriage and then while he was still trying to stay sober, his mother passed away.
Anders Osborne:
I think the death of my mother was … that was probably the catalyst. Pretty much within a few months of that, I started to go to wine tastings and I remember I told my wife, "No, no, no. It's going to be fine. I'm spitting out. I'm not swallowing anything. I just always … I've always been super into wines. You know that," and she goes, "No, I don't know that." I'm like, "Oh, you're stupid. I've always been into wines. I've collected wines. Before I met you, wine was my big thing. You didn't know that? Oh my God, I love wines. Anyway, I'm not drinking and I'm just tasting it and spitting it out. It's wonderful." So I did that every Thursday. I lasted three, four months without swallowing.
Vic Vela:
That's pretty remarkable, actually.
Anders Osborne:
Yeah, it is. Looking back, talk about torturing yourself. Just swallow that damn thing. So what I did was … I remember it very vividly. we're sitting around this table and the wines and the Pinots and all this stuff, and everybody's like, "Oh my God, you're so talented. I can't believe your palette. It's incredible." I go, "I know. I know. I've been doing it forever. It's just … it's natural to me. I should be a winemaker in brands. I think that is my calling." they're like, "Yeah, totally. You could do it." Then boom, I swallowed and I never forget that. It's amazing. The whole chest opens up, your brain, everything, all the signals start shooting like crazy and you just go "I'm back" and you just know it. You know it's happening.
Vic Vela:
You were playing with fire for so long. It's like the old saying in recovery, you hang out at a barbershop long enough, you're going to get your haircut. That's exactly what happened with you.
Anders Osborne:
You know it. I got a trim. So as I swallow that, it was on. I mean it was on, on, on. Then from that point on, within that next week, a friend of mine that's I hear in the stall next to me like … and I go "Hand me some of that." He's like, "No, man." I said, "Shut up. I've been back doing it for months. Don't worry about it. Give it to me." So he does and that's it. I stayed out all night, but the next morning I'm scoring again and it was on, seven or eight years of absolute raging hell.
Vic Vela:
okay, well let's talk about that. When you say it was on, what did your drinking look like at that time? What were you consuming? How much? How often? I guess what was a day in the life of Anders Osborne during this really crazy period?
Anders Osborne:
I don't know, four or five bottles of wine, a case of beer, fifth of something pretty daily, one or two eight balls. I'd cook half of it.
Vic Vela:
Anders, that's ridiculous. That's a ridiculous amount of booze and drugs.
Anders Osborne:
Yeah, it was ridiculous, but what I loved the most, which is something that really helped my recovery was to discover that I'm an alcoholic and that simplifies things so perfectly for me. It just brings it down to one thing, which is if you don't drink, none of the other stuff shows up. That's me. That's how it works for me.
Vic Vela:
So you were just doing this all the time, but you were married with kids. How was your substance abuse affecting your family?
Anders Osborne:
I had a little day bed out on the back porch and so I was isolating out there and I wasn't allowed to come in the house.
Vic Vela:
Oh, so your wife had … had she kicked you out of the house at that point?
Anders Osborne:
Yeah, not right away. We struggled for several years. We used to go out together, we used to go have dinners and hang out with friends and go see shows, go to strip bars and we had a great time. We were very classy. So literally I think after a few years of that extreme back porch stuff, and I kept painting out there and there was paint on everything and all my clothes and finally she said, "You can't be inside anymore, and the kids … this is really starting to affect everything." So she put me outside and then after I … God bless her, she put up with that for a couple of years. She then kicked me out totally and I wasn't allowed to live at the house. So I ended up with a friend who then also kicked me out and then I lived on a park bench out here in the park.
Anders Osborne:
A lot of times people think addiction is just the use. The use is the symptom, the addiction is how it affects everybody else. I think that's the thing that really is the impactful part of being addicted to sex, drugs, alcohol, work, anything, if you are obsessing over anything. In my case, I couldn't pick up the kids, father-daughter dance, I'll be … I was on day four, I've been up forever. I had to go keep smoking up in their little kids stall. It was just horrific.
Vic Vela:
So you were getting high at your kid's elementary school during a father-daughter dance?
Anders Osborne:
Yeah. Yeah. It's devastating when you start getting the … like we said, the tape starts playing back and then it … the addiction part has nothing to do with having a drink with your friends.
Vic Vela:
Well, and that's the crazy thing. I can relate. When my brother got married, I had to stay alert for it, so I did cocaine in the church bathroom before I went and was part of his wedding crew. It just made perfect sense to me to do that.
Anders Osborne:
Oh yeah. Thank you Jesus. It's perfect.
Vic Vela:
Were you still performing around this time?
Anders Osborne:
The last two years was very difficult. I just couldn't make it. The last two years I couldn't make it. I missed all the flights. I never made the gigs if it was out of town, then nobody could work with me. Managers dropped me and record labels and everybody, but there's always that one or two friend or person or associate that goes, "I got to do something."
Vic Vela:
It's often really painful to look back on memories like this. Anders captured that feeling, that sense of desperation in a song later on that he called Coming Down.
Anders Osborne:
After being up for days or using for a period as I was coming down, I realized that there was no one there, there was no one to catch me. It's just me every time. So I wrote a tune about it.
Vic Vela:
But Anders wasn't alone. In fact, some of his peers in the New Orleans music scene showed up for him when he was most desperate. Some of his closest friends, including legends like Ivan Neville and Dr John got Anders a bed in a Los Angeles treatment facility. All Anders had to do was get there from New Orleans. These guys all had your back and so now you're on a flight. You're on your way to rehab. Talk me through the early days of that. Were you ready? Were you finally ready?
Anders Osborne:
No, not even close. It was bad. The alcohol detox was horrific this time. It was brutal. I couldn't walk. I couldn't stand up. They had to carry me to the meetings and yeah. I had never had that before where alcohol was giving me that much grief. They called my manager and they said, "There's nothing we can do for him. He's got such severe wet brain. He hasn't said one single thing we understand. I don't think we can save him. He needs very different help."
Vic Vela:
This is a rehab center saying this to your manager. They're used to really bad cases.
Anders Osborne:
Yeah, I was a mess.
Vic Vela:
Anders slowly started to regain some focus. He remembers the staff being tough on him at first, but then they started becoming kinder and more encouraging, but rehab can be chaotic. One of his roommates jumped out of the window of their room each night to go find drugs. That guy didn't last very long in rehab, but Anders did and he started to wrestle with some missed opportunities from the past. At what point did you have the aha moment? You were obviously not ready or willing to get sober. You're seeing guys crawl out of your window. When did you finally have the moment where okay, everything fell into place?
Anders Osborne:
I think close to a month into it. I was sitting in that room and I don't know, I think I was clean for the first time, no drinking or nothing and the tape start playing again. This time it was like everything from the age of 12 and 13, it just started playing. Just kept playing and playing and it wouldn't stop. I started … I don't know, I started getting really kind of upset and it was weird, you know? So you see everything I've done. I climbed Mount Olympus and I traveled all over the … Europe and Africa, and all I could remember in my head was how drunk I was and how high I was, everywhere, every single place I went. I got to Mount Olympus, we got to the summit and the next morning we're supposed to go to the peak and I couldn't because I was too hung over, so I missed it. So I walked all the way up there for two and a half days and then I sat at the summit being hung over and then I walked down. Just insane.
Vic Vela:
Wow.
Anders Osborne:
Then the meeting of my wife and all the breakups and then the kids, I left them. I missed Christmases and birthdays and I wasn't there. Instead, I was in the crack house somewhere. When that starts playing in your head, and I think what happened was you kind of see clearly who you really are. Yep. That's …
Vic Vela:
You okay?
Anders Osborne:
Yeah.
Vic Vela:
Anders, I actually think … go ahead and take a minute. If you need to use the restroom or get a glass of water, by all means.
Anders Osborne:
Okay. I'll be right back.
Vic Vela:
Stick around. After this, Anders finds a way to get clean, pieces life back, and changed the lives of a lot of other musicians with similar struggles. Anders Osborne learned a lot in that residential rehab facility and it was rough. The counselors told him he should probably spend about six months there before trying to resume his music career, but Anders did something pretty scary, maybe even crazy. He left rehab after just five weeks,
Anders Osborne:
I need to work. I worked my whole life to play music and so I just had to start showing people that I'm reliable and accountable and that I can do a good job and then the money will go back and hopefully increase and it can be a good income. I had a house that I … or I still have that house, but I love this house. The reason why I left early, or after just five weeks, I said, "I have to go back to work. I have to save the house," and my wife says, "I don't want to live with you. I don't know if this is going to work." I said, "Well, I'll tell you what, just give me one month to hit the road really hard. I'm not worth much right now, but let me go out there and see if I can save the house to get one month of a mortgage payment." And she said, "All right, I'll do that." So I said, "You don't have to stay with me. We can still separate. We can sell the house after that, but we'll own it. It'll be ours."
Vic Vela:
It's really hard to understate how bold of a move this is. As Anders puts it, part of getting clean was learning to hand your decision making over to counselors who gradually teach you how to make better decisions. Going back on tour early surrounded by drugs and alcohol was a massive decision for someone who's new to sobriety. You needed to work, but at the same time, you had to stay sober. What was that experience like?
Anders Osborne:
It was horrific, to be honest with you. At the first run we did, the first two weeks on the road there, it was like a heroin addict drummer and my old dealer was my road manager and the bass player was a big weed head.
Vic Vela:
Were they still using when you were-
Anders Osborne:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, but everybody was helpful. They were trying, but I just couldn't find any relief and I would have people throw me eight balls on stage or find me before the show and slap some drugs and bring a beautiful bottle of something, scotch or wine or something, constantly dropping off drugs and alcohol and see if they could hook up a little party, get us going. So I had to fend that off.
Vic Vela:
When you would walk onto the stage, you're oftentimes walking by a bar, right? People drinking at the bar.
Anders Osborne:
If you play 150 plus dates a year, that's hanging out in the barbershop. That's what that is.
Vic Vela:
Yeah. There you go. You're there every single night. Going back on stage sober felt strange to Anders. He compared it to the feeling of throwing up and he says it took him months to feel comfortable simply standing on stage during a performance, even though he'd been doing it for years. What about playing guitar itself? Did that take a while to kind of figure out like just the chords, the fingering, everything?
Anders Osborne:
Yeah, a little bit, but it was more rather than knowing how to do it, that wasn't the hardest part. The worst part was knowing that I wasn't that good. So I start playing and what came back was very limited. I realized that a lot of it had been posturing. A lot of it had been sort of an attitude.
Vic Vela:
You wrote a song, Mind of a Junkie. I'm just going to read off a few of the lyrics here. I'm nervous, I'm sweaty. When did you write that?
Anders Osborne:
First two, three months of recovery.
Vic Vela:
And this was just, what? Your experience of being sober?
Anders Osborne:
Well, there was the early sobriety and the connecting of … trying to be sober and looking back at not being sober and also, in sobriety in the beginning, you live in a mind that is … it's not healthy at all.
Vic Vela:
Yeah. It's heavy stuff and I think as someone who remembers what early recovery was like, you're in this tug of war between your former self and the person who you really want to be.
Anders Osborne:
Yep.
Vic Vela:
To a recovering addict who's trying to stay sober on tour, a club is like an obstacle course or a minefield really, but then one night, two friends showed up at one of Anders' shows and this moment changed everything. They came from one of his recovery groups just to support him.
Anders Osborne:
Two guys from AA asked me if they wanted me to come and just come sit with me and I was a little, I don't know, confused. I said, "What do you mean come sit with me?" "I don't know. We just come sit with you while you play." I'm like, "Sure." So they show up and they sit next to the stage on two chairs, these two burly guys, beautiful cats, and they just sat there. They didn't do anything. They just sat there and I remember feeling like, I don't know, I felt accountable for doing a good job playing music. I'm supposed to do this. This is my job and accountable for, and I'm sober and I better be sober. Then I felt a little safer that someone that knows exactly everything about me and the addiction part of me better than anybody else, better than my family, they're here. They know exactly who I am, and that felt safe.
Vic Vela:
Your buddies in rehab who decided to show up for the gig, that was a preview to something that you would eventually create.
Anders Osborne:
So a few years into being sober and performing and getting more comfortable with it, I thought, "What if I would have had in the beginning some kind of network where I could have sober people come out and they could be there, keep me company and people like me. It probably would have been a lot easier to go back to work and to feel comfortable." So we started Send Me a Friend Foundation, which is exactly that. It's a network nationwide. I don't have the exact number because it grows every day, but I'd say it's close to 5,000 people nationwide. Basically what we do is 30 minutes before performance time and 30 minutes after, we can send someone. You can request it whether you're a sound engineer, lighting director, a roadie, musician, artist, superstar or totally unfamous and you're playing on Bourbon Street, but you need help. We can send somebody that can come sit with you and they keep you company while you work.
Vic Vela:
And that's it. It's just someone, a sober friend, just being present.
Anders Osborne:
Yeah. We're not going to meetings. We're not necessarily doing anything particularly to keep you sober, but we're there to keep you working, because the hardest part is to be as broke as you usually are after you get clean. In my case, we couldn't buy food for the kids. We had no money, so I had to work. So I thought this could be a good way for music industry people to go back to work in a pretty sketchy environment.
Vic Vela:
Anders has other plans for transforming the concert experience, not just for musicians in recovery, but for audience members trying to say sober. He dreams of having a sober section at concerts that offer non alcoholic beverages to help the audience members trying to stay clean feel like they're having a little more fun. These days, Anders says he lives a much healthier life. He runs four or five miles a day. He's been diagnosed as bipolar and received treatment for his mental health challenges, but he still has vivid memories of how much work it took to feel confident about his recovery. In fact, he wrote a song about it.
Vic Vela:
I'm a huge fan of Buddha and the Blues.
Anders Osborne:
Thank you.
Vic Vela:
I just think it's beautiful. I think it's your best work. How does Buddha and the Blues relate to your recovery and where you are in life right now?
Anders Osborne:
The first, I don't know, four or five, six years in recovery, it's like you're backing away from a fire. You constantly walking. You're facing this danger over there and you keep walking away from it. I'm backing away and backing away, but I'm keeping an eye on this thing and then all of a sudden you have turned around, and that, for me anyway, it's as if I had turned around and I'm no longer backing away from it. I am now choosing where to go.
Vic Vela:
It's a new direction. Yeah. I sometimes think of what performers like you see when you're at the venue, a lot of people partying, smoking weed, drinking. Have you become neutral to that yet?
Anders Osborne:
Yeah, I don't see it too much. I don't know. It's like I see the people more now. I don't see the crowd. I don't see the ambitious part of a lot of people came to see me. I see us coming together. I see individual people with their individual needs when I look out in the crowd.
Vic Vela:
So what do you tell people who want to be sober but feel like the world around them is making it really rough?
Anders Osborne:
I think be very, very gentle with yourself. Take it nice and slow. Don't beat yourself up over the use or non use or what you should or should not do and just start from that place of of self care and love and then I think very, very important, which I learned in the AA rooms is people, places and things. You have to start being harder on the people, places, and the things around you, not yourself. Don't beat yourself up because you're beautiful, but look at the things you have chosen to represent you. If you have your five closest people and they're all heavy drinkers, then you're in the wrong company. There's nothing wrong with you or them. It's just that's the wrong company for you if you want to get clean. That's the key thing for me is people, places and things. You have to make some adjustments and then you'll see how vast all the possibilities are in your life.
Anders Osborne:
You have a choice between feeling blue or serene. You get to choose.
Vic Vela:
Anders Osborne continues to write, record, and tour. He lives with his wife and two kids who stuck with him through all of his struggles with addiction and his Send Me a Friend Network continues to grow. Back From Broken is a show about how we're all broken sometimes and how we need help from time to time. If you're struggling with addiction, you can find a list of resources at our website, backfrombroken.org.
Doug:
Hi, this is Doug from Denver and this is what happened in my recovery this week. Part of my recovery, a big part of my recovery, is giving back to the community and we ran a toy drive where we were able to give over 700 gifts to folks. It just really makes me feel good to help other people that in their needs.
Hunter:
Hey, this is Hunter from Denver, Colorado and this week I finished my first semester of grad school. This gives me hope because I never thought I'd have a college degree, much less have the opportunity to go to grad school and do these things to continue to improve my life.
Vic Vela:
We'd love to hear how you're doing in your recovery and we might share it on this podcast. Record a voice memo or MP3 and send it to Vic at backfrombroken.org.
Vic Vela:
If you know someone who might benefit from stories like this, please share this podcast with them. We spent more than a year building this show, research, interviews, production, editing, because we know it's going to help a lot of people, but it does cost money to do these kinds of things. The people who listen to this podcast, people just like you, make it a reality. You can give a little bit now at backfrombroken.org. Back From Broken is hosted by me, Vic Vela. It's a production of Colorado Public Radio's audio innovation studio and CPR news. Thanks to people in recovery who helped us develop this podcast. Ben, Matthew, Sean, and Mateo, thank you so much for your guidance. The show is produced by Rebecca Romberg and John Pineau. Rachel Estabrook and Curtis Fox edited this episode. Our executive producers are Brad Turner and Kevin Dale. Music by Brad Turner and Daniel Mesher. Thanks for listening to Back From Broken. Please review the show on Apple podcasts. It really helps other people find it.
