New Biography Discusses Tammy Wynette
Together with Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette ruled the country music scene for years. Born in rural Mississippi, she died in Nashville 56 years later and in between created some of the most memorable music ever made, married five times, had four daughters and struggled with painkiller addiction. A new book by Jimmy McDonough, “Tammy Wynette” explores the life of the sad country queen, unwittingly writing a case study on the causes and contributions of life events to the development of drug addiction.
Causes of Painkiller Addiction: Early Relationships?
The search for the cause of drug addiction is one of the driving forces in substance treatment research. Why do some people use drugs and develop an addiction while others can use addictive substances a few times or experimentally and walk away?
Some say it’s a genetic predisposition, but what about the cases in which parents and other close relatives have never suffered from alcoholism or addiction? Tammy Wynette, for example, did not grow up with addiction but she did have one foundational issue that bothered her for her whole life: the loss of her father before she was a year old.
Hollis Pugh, Tammy’s father, died of brain tumor complications and Tammy had no memories of the man, but the topic of his early death bothered her throughout her life. The depression caused by the failure or lack of strong early relationships with parents is a possible contributing cause of drug addiction. Depression itself is a huge factor in drug addiction as many choose to self medicate their feelings with drugs and alcohol; because parental relationships or the lack thereof plays such a big part in mental stability and self esteem, it stands to reason then that the loss of a parent could indirectly contribute to the development of addiction.
Drug Addiction: Even Fame and Money Can’t Fight It
Like happiness, money and fame can’t buy you safety from drug addiction either, as Wynette found out. With three daughters and a failed first marriage under her belt, Wynette went off to Nashville with the hope of becoming a country singer. She ran into the right people who put her on the radio and got into the study and made a splash right away.
McDonough writes: “Tammy Wynette had gone from nobody to somebody in a flash. In 1967 alone, four of her singles would go top ten, three of them to number one, and her debut album would make it to number 7. She was also voted Most Promising Female Artist by Country Song Roundup, Music City News, and Record World. Plus she’d win a Grammy for ‘I Don’t Wanna Play House.’ ”
It was after the fame and money that her painkiller addiction started, demonstrating that even success can’t fight off addiction if the underlying causes aren’t treated.
Drug Addiction Cause: Bad Relationships?
Perhaps bad relationships are actually a secondary cause of drug addiction, born as they are from depression and poor relationships with parental figures. Tammy’s life is certainly evidence that multiple bad marriages do nothing to heal drug addiction.
For example, it wasn’t until her second marriage ended right around the time that “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” was released and she met and married the infamous George Jones that the painkiller addiction took hold. He was an alcoholic and she was popping pills; the marriage ended about 6.5 years later.
Over the next three marriages, each one was successively worse for Tammy and her addiction was never treated. Isolated and sick with addiction and illness in her last years, Tammy continued to record but never created anything nearly as successful as her early work.
What are some other causes of addiction? If the causes (i.e., depression, family relationships, etc) are treated during drug rehab, does that increase the chances of a successful recovery?
