GETTING CLEAN AND SOBER IN A ROCK 'N' ROLL WORLD

Curbing a musician's dependence on drugs and alcohol carries no guarantees.
Nirvana's Kurt Cobain accepted the help of the Musicians' Assistance
Program, but walked out of treatment and killed himself. However, many
other artists, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Dr. John, are part of the
60 percent success rate achieved during the program's first decade.

For some businesses, that might not sound like an impressive rate. But for
musicians who have clung to drugs, it's nothing short of a miracle, say
organizers.

"There had never before been a program for people in the music business to
get help with this disease," says Buddy Arnold, cofounder of MAP. "And it
is a disease."

It's a disease that Arnold knows well, having been a heroin addict for 31
years while touring as a saxophonist with the likes of Buddy Rich and Stan
Kenton. He finally cleaned up "with the help of the California Department
of Corrections," which gave him a seven-year prison sentence as a cap to
his 34 narcotics arrests. When Arnold got out, he married talent agent
Carole Fields, a recovering alcoholic who had lost two children in a plane
crash, and they went about purging their pain by helping musicians
transcend their own.

MAP, which now has a $1.5 million budget and receives grants from the
Recording Industry Association of America, started in a $100-a-month room
in the musicians union in Los Angeles and is still there. Its meetings have
been attended by some of the biggest rock stars in the world. In the last
three years the program has given its annual Stevie Ray Vaughan Award, for
artists who have kicked their habit, to Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, and
David Crosby.

"We just focus on what we do. Somehow we've managed to stay out of politics
and stay faithful to artists," says Arnold, who is coming to Boston to
chair a panel at the NEMO Music Showcase and Conference at the Suisse Hotel
on Thursday. Also on the panel will be former Aerosmith manager Tim
Collins, who is on the MAP advisory board and helped develop a presence for
the program in Boston. It now meets Mondays at the Berklee College of
Music, and all drug-dependent musicians are invited.

The program has also helped produce antidrug public service announcements
with such artists as KISS, Lauryn Hill, and Art Alexakis of Everclear. Not
all these artists have had drug problems, but Alexakis has. He kicked
heroin in 1986, before MAP existed, but has since been a major supporter of
the program.

"I'm just a huge fan of Buddy and Carole," Alexakis says of the program's
founders. "I don't necessarily adhere to altruism, but I really believe
that Buddy works with people from a place in his heart. He's been there,
and his purpose is to help people who want to get off dope and get clean
and have a better life. He says, 'Here's a way out. Here's the door. It's
not an easy door. It's going to suck, but there is a door if you want it."'

The program has helped lead 1,104 people to sobriety - mostly musicians,
but also professionals in related fields, like agents and studio engineers.
Program personnel evaluate the person (who must have at least five years of
paid experience in music), and 96 percent of the time pays the entire cost
of treatment. The program has a staff of five (along with 14
representatives in cities outside Los Angeles), but "they fight like cats
and dogs to beat up the treatment centers and keep their prices down,"
Collins says.

Adds Arnold: "We try to pay one-third of the normal rate. They're not going
to get rich off us."

Last year's statistics show that 34 percent of clients had been dependent
mainly on alcohol, 31 percent on heroin, 18 percent on cocaine, 8 percent
on opiates, 5 percent on speed, and 3 percent on marijuana, Arnold says.

Clients who need treatment are carefully monitored, he says. "We receive a
progress report from the treatment center, no matter where it is, once a
week. ... We don't just say, 'Go to this place and we'll pay the bill and
good luck.' We stay with the person."

Arnold and Fields know that addicts may also develop other, more benign
addictions to replace the self-destructive ones. "If you want to go to the
gym 12 hours a day and get crazy there, that will work," Arnold says. "You
have to become totally obsessed in some form to replace the insanity you
were involved in with drugs and alcohol."

Future goals for the program include getting its own halfway house and
establishing a senior citizens' facility for musicians who no longer have
families.

"We have a large relapse rate for people in the industry who get older and
have arthritis and operations and take pills as a result," says Fields."It
would be so great if there was a home where people could jam and be
together and eat together. It's really needed. People have got to step up
to the plate for this."

Information on the Musicians' Assistance Program is available by phone at
800-627-6271.