Never trust a junkie.....

I think that everyone who knows me knows of my fandom of the band the Sex Pistols. It's a fandom that goes back as far as I can remember, listening to them on Z-Rock back in the day on one of Crankin' Craig's shows. I’ve always been really fascinated with the band, the members, and the story behind their short music career.

I guess my opinion, due to not having access to as much information as I do now, was lacking back then about the life that he lived—albeit a very short one—and the way that he died. When I was younger, I idolized him for the look and demeanor that I knew at the time. But as I grew older and out of my adolescent mindset, that changed. For the longest time, I had negative thoughts about him because, you know, he was a junkie and an addict. But the more that I read, the more interviews that I heard, and the more background knowledge that I learned about him and the way things really played out, I kind of changed my perspective a little. I used to think he was just an addict and a junkie who died doing stupid stuff, and that it was all his fault. I always thought that if you’re an addict, no matter what you’re addicted to, it’s totally up to you to be able to quit and seek the help that you need.

But I think over the years I’ve come to the realization that under certain circumstances, the blame can be divided. For example, since we are talking about the Sex Pistols, and specifically Sid Vicious and his addiction: when Sid joined the band, he wasn’t addicted to heroin. Technically, his name wasn’t Sid Vicious. Johnny Rotten named him after his hamster, who (in Rotten's own words) had no teeth and couldn’t find his way out of a paper crisp bag. But once Sid met certain people and started hanging around and trying things to fit in, it eventually led to his addiction. It led to him leading a life that started changing him into someone that didn’t seem to fit his character at the time.

Malcolm McLaren, the manager of the Sex Pistols, took that naivety of Sid's and took advantage of it. He made him feel like he was the bad boy, that nothing could stop him. He put that image in Sid's head, and Sid started believing it himself. With the drug addiction, it started increasing the persona that he became. From everything that I have read, most people around him started feeding that addiction. If it wasn’t other people he was hanging around with, it was Malcolm getting him drugs, or it was Nancy Spungen getting him drugs, hell even his own mother.

And so that leads to my update on where to place the blame. Like I had originally said, a person who is addicted is in control of their own life—whatever that addiction may be, whether it’s cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, or anything. If someone needs to quit, it is up to that person to want to quit before they can remove that addiction from their life. But if the addiction is so bad that said person cannot remove the addiction by themselves, they need a support system—whether it’s a friend or a family member. Whoever it is, they need someone to help them find that light at the end of the tunnel that isn’t an obvious oncoming train. In Sid's case, I believe he didn’t have that support system. In retrospect, he had more enablers than people who genuinely wanted to help him. 

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