Illustration by Ana Mouriño
We know it was a shotgun, but were there underlying problems?
What if Kurt Cobain had taken lithium instead of heroin? Would he still be alive today? Would it have stifled his creativity? Or maybe enhanced it? Would Nirvana be as great if it continued beyond In Utero?
It’s quite possible that one of the reasons Nirvana is so phenomenal is that the band’s lifespan was only long enough to create three albums and a B-sides record. “It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” Kurt infamously wrote in his suicide note, quoting Neil Young.
I have always felt that Kurt and I are kindred spirits. Both of us are bipolar, both have an affinity toward punk ideology and both had problems with addiction. I am clean and sober now for two years. My drugs of choice were alcohol and crack cocaine. I also understand Kurt’s esoteric and enigmatic lyrics. I survived. Many of my bipolar comrades aren’t so lucky.
Bipolar artistic figures abound in history. From Edgar Allan Poe and Vincent Van Gogh, to Robin Williams, Jimi Hendrix and Amy Winehouse. All of them self-medicating bipolar addicts.
We will never know the answers to the above questions, but it is credibly and anecdotally documented that Kurt Cobain was bipolar. There was a monster on his back. A monster called manic depression.
Cobain experienced the intense highs and extreme lows of bipolar disorder a.k.a. manic depression. His song “Lithium” describes bipolar to a T, down to the titular drug used to treat manic depression. It runs the gamut from happiness to indifference to sadness, sometimes within the same sentence. However, there is no evidence that Kurt actually took lithium.
Kurt was diagnosed with ADD at a young age, and with bipolar thereafter, according to an interview with Kurt’s cousin Bev Cobain. Bev Cobain is a registered nurse with a background working in mental health.
His depression is clear as purified spring water. There are lyrics like “I miss the comfort in being sad,” (“Frances Farmer”) to “I think I’m dumb” (“Dumb”) to the down-in-the-dumps yearning for a better life in “Pennyroyal Tea” (“Distill the life that’s inside of me”).
Then there’s “Radio Friendly Unit Shifter” with its chorus: “What is wrong with me?” (x4) and the verse line “bipolar opposites attract.”
Kurt Cobain reportedly would go into maniacal work tears, writing songs with lyrical motifs and song patterns that are decidedly bipolar. There are nonsensical lyrics. When someone is manic, they make strange word associations and many misbehave creatively. Case in point Nirvana’s most popular single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” – “a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido.”
Even the sound of Nirvana – subdued verses and big, loud choruses drifts between two poles.
Could it be that Kurt didn’t want lithium to destroy his creativity? And that’s why he turned to heroin? Quite possibly.
About 56 percent of individuals with bipolar had experienced drug or alcohol addiction during their lifetime, according to the American Journal of Managed Care. And one in five bipolar people successfully commit suicide, according to the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.
Kurt Cobain was a troubled bipolar musical genius who didn’t have to pass. Despite his ubiquitous mantra “I hate myself and I want to die,” he could’ve survived if only he succumbed to good ol’ fashioned psychiatric treatment.
For further reading, there is an entire chapter devoted to Kurt in my memoir The Bipolar Addict: Drinks, Drugs, Delirium & Why Sober Is the New Cool, available now on Amazon.
Nirvana is overrated.
Nirvana was probably the Last great American rock band,
of seismic proportions! underdogs they were and never wanted to be as popular and well known as they turned out to be.
there hasnt been an american punk rock band that tore down the walls of the mainstram as much as this band did in the early 90’s…and ever since then, nothing but a few other bands like the strokes, MMJ, KOL? I mean what did they change? the way that Nirvana completely change the scene in 1991 was massive, from hairmetal dinosaurs GNR and Metallica, to punk rock seattle scene bands like soundgarden and Pearl jam to name a few, It was an Incredible shift in music and how it was heard and presented to an entirely new mass audience. No one else has done that since, that I can recall, perhaps its maybe because there are so many subgenres that we dont need that anymore, we dont need to label it, its just what it is…its happening in so many different levels of musical genres that we no longer need THAT band to spearhead a movement.
or maybe we have run out of Ideas, but one thing is true, Nirvana were the last band to explode like a Nuclear bomb to a lot of unsuspecting people. maybe it will happen again someday, maybe its happening as I type, Nirvana are an example of what could happen, and why wouldnt it? there’s a lot of kids who havent discovered them yet, glad that is overrated to some, someday it will be rediscovered and it will be an underated discovery of an explosion, like the underdogs they were, just like the first time.
NO! Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain! Her own father even thinks so.
yeah, courtney love has bipolar and killed curt
psychiatric treatment is not a cure-all. Many do not find help with this so called “treatment”. There are many psychiatrist who have agendas of their own and there are of course many who simply cannot be helped, regardless.
We don’t have all the answers- what works for some does not work for all. Its easy to judge someone we did not know, its also easy to judge someone after they’re dead- it is rather pointless because like the invention of “God”, it doesn’t provide you with actual answers. Only beliefs and speculations.
Lithium might have surpressed some of Cobain’s brilliance, but he might also still be with us. If you listen carefully, his pain resonates throughout his music.
He was a heroin addict, you dumb asses. Life sentence, end of story.
One of his biggest complaints at the time of his death was abdominal pain. He even mentioned in his suicide letter that he was tired of his “stomach hurting”. He had severe, chronic constipation from all of the heroin he was shooting. Not saying he didn’t have other mental disorders, but it was the H that got him in the end. Really ashamed, because he was a brilliant songwriter and musician.