“We were tearing it up—all the way to the point where he decided he had to go in to rehab,” said Caldwell. “If he had been completely straight, he would have been playing one hundred times better—but nobody in any rock ‘n’ roll band was straight. I don’t think Johnny was in that bad a shape—any better or any worse than most people—he was just a part of it.”
Derringer was also taken by surprise when Johnny went into rehab. “We thought Johnny pretty much had it under control,” he told Muise. “Obviously, he was dabbling with heroin. But that’s all we thought it was. Just dabbling. We didn’t see it excessively, hardly at all. It wasn’t until he announced to us that he had a problem and he was going to stop the band and check himself into a hospital that we knew the problem was to that extent.”
Johnny was in worse shape than he let on. Although he avoided overdosing by always letting somebody else shoot up first, within six months of mainlining every day, he had become a full-blown junkie.
“I tried to stop, but it was very hard—almost impossible,” Johnny says. “I didn’t think it would happen to me. I thought I was keepin’ it under control. I didn’t think I was doin’ enough to get hooked. You started not being able to function correctly without doin’ some heroin. If you didn’t do it, you just didn’t feel good at all—you’d feel real emotionally messed up. Physically it was even worse. I had the shakes. If you did more heroin, you’d just get normal but it didn’t last very long. I was still playin’ out and I remember goin’ to California for the Fillmore West show and thinking, ‘What am I gonna do here? I don’t have any heroin and I gotta find somebody with some.’ I felt terrible. Physically and mentally. You just felt bad, felt like nothing else would help to get you back on track but doin’ some heroin. You hated yourself. As soon as that started to happen, I wanted to get away from it, but I couldn’t get away from it on my own.”
In early July, Johnny’s management team told the band Johnny would be taking a break.
“When Johnny went into the hospital in the summer of 1971, Johnny Winter And broke up,” said Caldwell. “There was talk of him taking a break or us taking a month off. It was rather sudden, but it wasn’t like any major calamity or anything. The band was blazin‘—we were having a good time but there was always some high drama. Everything is high drama with Johnny. It was like, ‘If there wasn’t a problem, let’s create one.’ That’s how it was with Steve Paul and Teddy running the ship. Steve slave-driving Johnny for his own end, and Teddy seeing the same movie as Steve.
“This had been brewing for six weeks—we’d had a week or two off when they decided to pull the trigger. Teddy called and says Johnny’s decided he’s going to go in a hospital in New Orleans, we’re gonna take a break, we’re gonna send you a week or two weeks’ pay; or some crap. The obvious question for everyone was, ‘How long is he gonna be gone; how long is it gonna take?’
“Curiously, I had gotten a telegram from a couple of guys in Iron Butterfly who wanted to put a band together with me. The timing couldn’t have been better. I went to L.A. and started Captain Beyond, a progressive-rock band, with the guys from Iron Butterfly [guitarist Rhino a.k.a. Larry Reinhardt and bassist Lee Dorman] and the original singer [Rod Evans] for Deep Purple. Rick moved over to play with Edgar and Randy just hung out and didn’t know what to do—poor guy.
“Had Steve Paul and Teddy any brains and come to everybody and said, ‘Johnny is gonna take six months off or nine months off. Do whatever you got to do—we’ll put you on some kind of retainer so when Johnny’s feeling better, we can reconvene and get back to it.’ But because they were so opportunistic, greedy, and shortsighted—and so, ‘I can fix, replace anybody, anytime,’ they just missed the whole deal. Imagine if they had treated everybody right and that band had stayed together four or five years. It would have been a historical band; Johnny would have been worth a gazillion dollars and so would I. But they didn’t have the foresight to see that would have been the smart way to do it.”
Derringer has also expressed resentment about the way that band dissolved, as well as doubts about the extent of Johnny’s addiction.
“I still don’t think the problem was as drastic as he let on,” he told Muise. “I believe that what happened ... we were in England, touring. And he got a chance to see how they dealt with their drug addicts in England. They put them on a maintenance program. They allowed them to come and pick up their drugs, at cheap prices, from a pharmacy. Johnny returned from that trip to England and he said, many times, ‘Man, that looks great. You never have to worry about dealing on the street with people. You can just go and the government’s gonna give you the drugs for the rest of your life.’ He said, ‘Boy, that’s what I would like.’ So, in effect, I don’t think he had as much of a problem as he let on at that time.”
To deny the extent of Johnny’s drug addiction or to believe he faked it to get on a methadone program demonstrates the bitterness some musicians still harbor against him for giving them a taste of success and then moving on without them. And also suggests just how close mouthed Johnny was with anyone who wasn’t an old friend from Texas.
Despite the doubts of band members, Johnny was in rough shape, physically and mentally. Traveling with Roma, who was also frightened by his addiction, he went home to Texas to try to sort things out. Johnny saw what drugs had done to Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and knew that he, too, had lost control of his life.
“You can’t make a career out of drugs, and they tried to,” Johnny says. “I did too. But I went for help because I didn’t want to die. I don’t think Jimi or Janis wanted to die, but I don’t think they wanted to admit they needed help. They probably didn’t think anybody could do them any good. You do have that feeling like the psychiatrists don’t know what they’re talking about. You’re smarter than they are—a lot of people have that idea that it just wasn’t gonna help. But I knew it was something I had to try before dying.”
Johnny traveled to Beaumont to tell his mother he wanted to die and just couldn’t handle his lifestyle anymore. His parents suggested therapy with Dr. Burns Belk, the psychiatrist who had conducted his IQ tests when he was a child. “I had great parents; they wanted to help me and did what they could,” says Johnny. “They didn’t know what to say, really—it was so far beyond anything they could imagine.
“Just trying therapy made things a little bit better. I went for sessions and talked to him but not for very long. It didn’t take too long before they put me in the hospital—they could tell I was suicidal. I was thinkin’ of how to do it. I thought I’d probably overdose on downs. I went through my first withdrawal right before I went in the hospital in Beaumont. They tried giving me tranquilizers, and I had sessions and group meetings. It helped, but not as much as I wanted it to—I still wanted drugs. They gave me antidepressants in the hospital and they just didn’t do much good.”
Johnny stayed at the Beaumont Neurological Center for six weeks, but it became obvious the center wasn’t equipped to deal with heroin addicts. Dr. Belk researched other options and decided Johnny had a better chance at recovery as an inpatient at River Oaks Hospital in New Orleans.
Pat Rush, a guitarist Johnny met during his stay at the New Orleans hospital who later joined him for the
Nothin’ But the Blues
tour and the recording sessions for
White
,
Hot
&
Blue,
remembers Johnny’s state of mind when he decided he needed help.
“When Johnny was on the road with Derringer and those guys, they all were trying to see who could do the most dope and still play that night,” said Rush. “But Johnny was really getting tired. He was calling Steve up and saying, ‘I’m doing drugs to wake up, drugs to go to sleep, drugs to play, drugs for everything, I’m touring, and touring, and touring. I need time off.’ Steve would say, ‘Well, you’re gonna be off the road for a month when you’re in the studio.’ Anybody in the business knows that off means off, not working in the studio. He finally got fed up, so he checked himself into River Oaks. I thought that was pretty amazing—that he did it himself.”
Steve Paul remembers it differently. “I remember him expressing unhappiness, but don’t recall him seriously speaking of suicide,” Paul said. “At one point I called his parents and asked them to put him in rehab. I cancelled a virtually sold-out arena tour, and my only concern was that he get better.”
Celebrities being treated for addiction and hospitals focused on addictive disorders were not an everyday occurrence in 1971. Many publications reporting Johnny’s hiatus referred to River Oaks as a mental hospital; a 1972
Rulling Stone
article described him as “Johnny Winter, frail Texas albino bluesman/turned/rock superstar/turned/ mental hospital inmate.”
“River Oaks was completely drug free and I thought I’d give that a try,” says Johnny. “They took in heroin addicts and a lot of different kinds of addicts—speed and everything else. I was in that hospital for nine months without doing anything at all. There were several floors and had eight people in a room. The people always changed—people got out and new ones came in. They had all kinds of manic depressives, people who had drug problems, any kind of mental problem you can imagine. It was all mental stuff. There were both girls and guys in the hospital—girls had their own rooms.”
Withdrawal symptoms, which begin from six to forty-eight hours after stopping habitual heroin use and subside after a week, include dilated pupils, diarrhea, runny nose, goose bumps, abdominal pain, fever, physical and mental agitation, nausea, and vomiting. Kicking a long-term habit is also accompanied by a feeling of heaviness, cramps, cold sweats, chills, and severe muscle and bone aches. Quitting cold turkey causes muscle spasms in the legs and increases the intensity of withdrawal symptoms, including drug cravings, headaches, sleeplessness, confusion, depression, and anxiety.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, heroin literally changes the brains and behavior of users because the body adapts to the presence of the drug. Heroin withdrawal can’cause serious physical and emotional trauma, including stroke, heart attack, and even death. To avoid that risk, conventional treatment uses drugs such as methadone or valium to wean addicts off of heroin in a controlled environment. But the River Oaks Hospital staff decided Johnny could withstand withdrawal without medical intervention, and made him kick heroin cold turkey.
“They didn’t give me any drugs for withdrawal; you just had to make it on your own,” says Johnny. “I felt horrible for three months, mentally and physically. I thought I would die. Physical withdrawal lasted a couple of months—you can’t sleep and you can’t eat. I started to feel a little better after three months because I could finally sleep. But it went beyond physical addiction; it affected you long after the physical withdrawal. The mental part was the worst part; psychological addiction was the hardest part to get rid of. When you’re tryin’ to get off of heroin, it messes with your head. It’s horrible, just horrible. There’s no way to explain how bad it makes you feel. You just don’t feel like you have any control over anything. Things you would normally love, you don’t care about anymore. It’s the worst feeling in the world and you can’t make it go away. Except without doing more drugs.”
Johnny couldn’t have visitors for the first six months at River Oaks Hospital. He didn’t mind the isolation; he was committed to cleaning up his act.
“At first I didn’t like havin’ people visit me,” says Johnny. “I was trying to get rid of my drug problem—I didn’t want to have people comin’ in and tellin’ me what they were doin’. I was in the hospital six months before Carol could come see me. That first visit was real nice. She’d come down every once in a while after that—some of my friends came to see me too. Uncle John and Keith Ferguson. Nobody from New York came to visit—not Steve Paul, Teddy, or Rick Derringer—just my friends from Texas. Steve and Teddy called so it didn’t bother me they didn’t visit.”
Like most inpatient facilities, the days were structured between individual counseling sessions, group sessions, recreation, and personal down time.
“We had TVs and had a little time to watch them,” says Johnny. “We could read—but for me, it depended upon how big the print is. I could read
Rolling Stone;
I got it at the hospital all the time. I don’t read much now; my eyesight is worse than it was. I can see details if I’m close enough. Every day, you had an hour off to go outside and play basketball or whatever, and you had time off in the afternoon to take a nap if you wanted to.
“They had decent food at the hospital and you could wear regular clothes. We wore sandals, jeans, blue-jean shirts. I made some real good friendships. I got to be real good friends with one girl—I think I was the first guy she went to bed with—she was about fifteen. We stayed in touch afterward—I’ve been friends with her for years.”
Turner remembers Johnny talking about that friendship during one of their visits.
“Johnny told me he had a sexual experience with one of the girl patients,” said Turner. “They had an encounter on the levee down by the river. Needless to say, it was against the rules, and he got in trouble for that.”
Turner visited Johnny twice during his stay in River Oaks, and recalls Johnny being severely depressed.
“He was having trouble with his anxiety and from what he said to me, it was severe depression,” said Turner. “River Oaks had people that were long term; one guy died in there shortly after Johnny left. That guy fascinated Johnny. He was a raving lunatic, completely mad. They would chain him to the bed; he would shit in his hands and throw it at the staff. I don’t think Johnny got anything too special down there except a break. He just stayed awhile and when he felt better he left.”