This doesn’t just apply to rock bands and dangerous drugs like heroin, it applies to any habit, way of working, or narrative that is bound to become unsustainable over time and starts to work against us.
In the early 2000s, there was an exciting rock band that made everyone sit up and take notice. Their debut album, Contraband, sold upwards of 250,000 copies in its first week of release and would eventually sell 4 million copies worldwide.
Funnily enough, though the band was new, a few of its members were already legends in their own right. Velvet Revolver was an unusual band by any stretch of the imagination. It consisted mainly of former members of the mercurial Guns ’n’ Roses, a band that cemented its legendary status with its debut album Appetite for Destruction before going on to implode a few years later because of infighting. They reunited in 2016, putting aside years of bickering after a gap of nearly 20 years.
The lead singer of Velvet Revolver was the late Scott Weiland, who was also the frontman of another seminal rock band, Stone Temple Pilots. His career was plagued by substance abuse issues and he joined Velvet Revolver after he was fired by his original band for attitude problems and his ceaseless battle with drugs.
In one of the initial interviews of the band, one of the band members of Velvet Revolver, referring to Scott Weiland’s struggle with drugs and repeated attempts to get clean said ‘there are no old heroin addicts, they’re all dead’. It made me laugh when I read it and yet, it also made a very important point. What he was basically saying is it’s tough to sustain something that is so unhealthy over a period of time and emerge out of it unscathed.
This doesn’t just apply to rock bands and dangerous drugs like heroin, it applies to any habit, way of working, or narrative that is bound to become unsustainable over time before it starts to work against us.
In the past few months, I have spoken to a few people who expressed similar sentiments when it came to changing careers, making drastic changes and taking a hard look at their lives. All of them were saying the same thing in different ways — they couldn’t see themselves doing what they were doing for the next few years and if they were to stay on the same path, their lives would have become unbearable. In other words, they couldn’t fathom seeing themselves doing what they were doing for the rest of their lives or even the next few years without it taking a toll on their lives.
When you see people that are just tired and burned out, companies that are falling behind, cultures that are sucking the life out their people, it’s the same problem at work, in different forms— all of them are on a path that is no longer sustainable for them.
One way to avoid this is to install systems and practices that are sustainable. When cricketers retire from one format to extend their careers, they have realized that if they continue to run their bodies roughshod, their careers will meet with a premature end. After a certain point, it’s impossible to play all formats and keep one’s body and mind together.
If you’re running yourself haggard, the odds of you plodding on for a reasonable amount of time without losing your mind or your health is remote.
Scott Weiland’s story, unfortunately for him, didn’t have a happy ending. Shunned by both of the big-ticket bands that he sang for because of his antics, he eventually fronted a solo band called Scott Weiland and the Wildabouts. In December 2015, Weiland died of an accidental overdose. His unsustainable ways had finally turned against him. At the same time, his bandmates, most of who had their own battles with substance and alcohol abuse, have managed to get their act together and are still touring and making music.
If something that you’re doing is hurting you now, better to find a fix before it becomes a gaping wound.
