Punk musicians in recovery
Calm like a Bomb: Rock to Recovery’s Brian Plink reflects on the serenity of sobriety
Brian Plink, a.k.a. Brian Bourke (fourth from left) and the Rock to Recovery crew. (Courtesy of Steady Jenny) One of the elements of addiction, according to a certain 12 Step recovery program, is obsession, defined as “that fixed idea that takes us back, time and time again, to our particular drug, or some substitute, to…
Read MoreDehd’s Emily Kempf: Youth is no obstacle to sobriety, music, art or anything else
The Chicago indie rock band Dehd is, from left, Jason Balla, Emily Kempf and Eric McGrady. (Photo courtesy of Alexa Viscius) There’s a saying in the rooms of recovery that has proven to be a blueprint for Emily Kempf’s life. “Lost dreams awaken and new possibilities arise.” As the bassist-vocalist for the Chicago-based lo-fi indie…
Read MoreGood Riddance to destructive habits: The sobriety journey of punk provocateur Russ Rankin
Courtesy of Lindsey McGuire | Lindsey Lu Photography It’s not surprising that Russ Rankin got clean and sober — after all, a lot of his peers found that doing so was a lot more preferable than the alternative, he told The Ties That Bind Us recently. “As time goes on, people who are kind of…
Read MoreKillradio’s Brandon Jordan: ‘If you want to stay clean and sober … you have to believe in something’
Growing up, drugs and alcohol seemed like one of those old “road closed” signs in horror movies to Brandon Jordan, a harbinger of danger lurking on the other side of a distant hill. He was 21 before he even picked up, mostly because he saw the havoc they inflicted: He lost his father to a…
Read MoreD.I. guitarist, Rock to Recovery administrator Clinton Calton: Thanks to recovery’s promises, ‘I’m living the dream’
Courtesy of Jason Cook Drugs led to Clinton Calton getting arrested in front of a crowd of his peers, an incident that became the stuff of urban legend throughout the rest of his school days. It was only weed, but Calton was in the seventh grade. And, he told The Ties That Bind Us recently,…
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