Last night I watched the video of Townes Van Zandt's life. Perhaps only with the benefit of hindsight, his end was inevitable- died at age 52 after a lifetime of drug abuse and addiction.

It is a disturbing documentary as one watches the disintegration of a tremendously talented man.

It's not a new thought, of course, but my question is: If these tortured souls (Van Zandt, Hendrix, Joplin, Hank, Parsons, Elvis, et al) had NOT gone into the arts - perhaps gone into banking or real estate- would they have survived? Would they hav 'outgrown' their warped and skewed reality? Would they have outgrown their need for the artificial high?