Sport

Why are performance-enhancing drugs seen negatively for athletes, but no problem for musicians? Why do we worship The Beatles (big-time drug takers and their creativity amplified substantially through drug use) and attack Ben Johnson?

Comments

I think this is a fascinating question, one which will probably bounce around in my mind for a while. I can well imagine music companies, for example, writing recording contracts only for musicians who pass drug tests. But I do think there are a couple of relevant differences between musicians and athletes concerning performance enhancing drugs. (1) The nature of the competition in music is not as exclusive. And (2) the extent to which drugs enhance rather than undermine performance is clearer in sports than in music. You see in a running race or playing a match, there can be only one winner. The victory of one implies the defeat of another. In music, by contrast, many musicians can be successful, and it's not clear that the success of one prevents the success of others. Many records can go gold. Now, I'll grant you, in music sometimes success is exclusive. Only one person can be first violin of the New York Philharmonic. Only one performer can win the Grammy in a given year. It's in cases like that that this question is so intersting. Grammy Awards could easily be conferred only on those who passed drug tests? But there is, on the other hand the second disanalogy I raise. While it's clear that anabolic steroids increase muscle mass, is it really clear that canabis or LSD helps musicians perform better? Anecdotally, I'm not at all convinced that this is so. I suspect that drugs and alcohol have wrecked more musical performances than they've magnified. This difference, however, also points to a third disanalogy. Alcohol and perhaps canabis and other mind-altering drugs can be used in moderate ways with few pathologies. That's less true for most performance enhancing drugs in sport. I'll grant you, however, that what separates performance enhancing drugs in sport from vitamins and sophisticated nutrition is a rather difficult (I suspect impossible) line to draw clearly.

You might also look at the answers to Question 906.

Read another response by Peter S. Fosl, Jyl Gentzler

Read another response about Sport