Off the Charts: Crosby, Stills and Nash

Guns, drugs and David Crosby

By Newt Briggs

Chalk it up to a childlike faith in better living through chemistry, but in the '60s and '70s, rock stars snorted enough cocaine to make South American drug lords as rich and powerful as the Incan kings of yore. Among these, David Crosby and Stephen Stills--two-thirds of the '70s supergroup Crosby, Stills and Nash--stood alone, spending thousands of dollars a day on their nose candy habits and even toying with the idea of naming the band "The Frozen Noses" to commemorate the numbing effect the drug had on their swiftly eroding septums.

Inevitably, such flagrant abuse had a profound impact on their mental states. As Crosby later recalled, "One morning I got up, jumped in my Volkswagen bus, drove down to [Monkees frontman] Peter Tork's house, got out, walked through the living room and went to lay down by the pool before I realized I hadn't put any clothes on."

From there, the former Byrd went on to set the bar by which all future rock star breakdowns would be judged. Forget about Scott Weiland and Courtney Love; Crosby was a walking, talking "Behind the Music" marathon--eventually ending up in a Texas state penitentiary for freebasing cocaine in a Dallas nightclub. In fact, Crosby's freebase problem got so bad that he became accustomed to setting himself on fire with a propane torch. According to his tell-all autobiography Long Time Gone, he'd usually "just roll over and the fire would go right out." Crosby also learned to drive with his knees so he could hit the crack pipe in the car. For anyone who missed it, here are a few other highlights of his descent into the abyss.

1971: Crosby is arrested in Newport Beach, Calif., after allegedly dumping pot from the bilge pumps of his yacht during a police inspection.

1977: After performing for Jimmy Carter at the White House, Crosby, Stills and Nash are left alone in the Oval Office. The trio promptly fires up a joint.

1982: In March, Crosby plows his car into a freeway median on his way to sing at a demonstration at a nuclear power plant. When emergency crews arrive, they not only extract a befuddled Crosby from the wreckage but Quaaludes, cocaine residue and an unlicensed .45 automatic. Three weeks later, he is arrested for possession of cocaine and a handgun at Cardi's nightclub in Dallas.

1983: Crosby appears in a Texas court to face charge stemming from the nightclub incident. According to a report in the Dallas Times Herald, "Several times he fell asleep and snored loudly, his head tilted back and his mouth open. When the snoring became too loud, one of his attorneys leaned over and shook him awake." Crosby finally snaps to attention when he is sentenced to five years in prison.

1984: While appealing the Texas verdict, Crosby is arrested in Marin County, Calif., in possession of a dagger and a Hunter S. Thompson-worthy drug stash that included heroin, cocaine, pot and codeine.

1985: After escaping a court-mandated drug treatment facility, Crosby is locked down at Texas State Prison in Huntsville, where he serves nine months of a five-year sentence.

1994: Crosby receives a liver transplant at the Dumont-UCLA Transplant Center in Los Angeles. At the time, his liver had nearly stopped functioning due to extensive alcohol and drug abuse, as well as hepatitis-C. Even though the average wait for a liver transplant in 1994 was almost half a year, Crosby only waited 18 days for his transplant.

2000: Lesbian rocker Melissa Etheridge reveals that Crosby is the biological father of her two children, Bailey and Beckett. Although Crosby was reportedly sober at the time, many questioned whether Etheridge and her life partner, who was artificially inseminated with Crosby's seed, were under the influence of narcotics.

2004: After leaving a suitcase containing an ounce of marijuana, a handgun and a knife at a Doubletree Suites hotel in Times Square, Crosby is arrested by the New York City Police. A month earlier, when asked about his history of drug abuse by Maryland's Frederick News-Post, Crosby said, "I haven't been tempted by the stuff in years. You get past it."