It Felt Like Imprisonment: How Sterling Campbell Quit Drugs and Alcohol

In brief

Sterling Campbell, a New York drummer who toured with David Bowie and Duran Duran, spent eight years on drugs, daily drinking and two packs of cigarettes a day. A pamphlet handed to him in a park in 1998 began his way out — and a harder lesson after it.

Hiding in the apartment

Some people hide what’s wrong by going out every night. Some stop going out at all. If you’ve ever pulled the curtains on your own life, you’ll understand Sterling’s.

“I became increasingly paranoid around people and just hid away in my apartment,” he remembers. “This was a very dark time.”

From the outside, his life looked like the dream. He was born and raised in New York City, and from an early age he wanted fame and fortune through music. After high school he spent all of his energy on it, playing clubs and rehearsing with band after band.

In 1986 he auditioned for a famous entertainer’s world tour, got it, and came home in demand. He recorded on album after album and toured with prominent artists.

Drugs had been the one line he kept. “It was the one thing I prided myself for never doing,” he says. But in the 90’s, with new people, new places and new temptations, he crossed it.

He began taking all kinds of drugs and drinking every day, and picked up a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit. That went on almost every day for eight years.

His five-year relationship ended, “mainly due to my selfishness and infidelities,” he says.

“I couldn’t believe I let this happen. I was very angry with myself and would constantly put myself down.” When he grew tired of blaming himself, he blamed his family, his friends, the music business.

He tried yoga, tai chi and therapy. Nothing reached it. “I wanted to change it, but I did not know how,” he says. “It felt like imprisonment.”

If you’ve promised yourself this is the last time more times than you can count — that isn’t weakness of character. It’s what being stuck feels like from the inside.

A pamphlet in the park

In 1998, on an early morning walk in the park, Sterling passed a group of women doing exercises. One of them handed him a pamphlet. It was Falun Dafa.

He was wary. He had spent “thousands of dollars on people who were putting a price on spirituality,” he says, so he was surprised when the contact person he called told him it would not cost him any money.

The next day he went to the practice site and learned the five exercises. He found them easy to learn. When he kept asking questions, a practitioner offered him Zhuan Falun, the main book of the practice, by Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa.

He began reading it that same day. “The more I read the more I was drawn into the book,” he says. “I felt I was in the presence of something very unique and immense.”

He started going to the park every morning to do the exercises, and kept reading. Within a month, he remembers, he was no longer using drugs, drinking or smoking. “I couldn’t believe this was happening.”

Treating it like a race

But the story doesn’t end there. For Sterling, that was where the harder part began.

The book talks about letting go of attachments, and the drugs, he realized later, had only been the surface. Underneath were fear, jealousy, showing off, competition, selfishness, the hunger for fame. “I’ll just practice hard to get rid of these attachments like I did the others,” he told himself.

“I made it sound so easy but it is the hardest task I’ve ever encountered.”

Because the substances had gone so fast, he expected the rest to go just as fast. They didn’t.

He became competitive and jealous when he practiced with others. “I was treating it like a racing competition,” he says. “I could not tolerate people making more progress than me.” So he kept his distance from the other practitioners. He began feeling unworthy and depressed; he felt, he says, “I was abusing this wonderful gift that I was given.”

At home it was hard too. “Everything changed for me so fast that my friends and family could not understand what was happening.” Trying so hard to be good, he caught himself becoming “self-righteous and critical at times,” and usually noticed only afterwards.

If you’ve ever quit the obvious thing and then found the harder things still waiting underneath — that isn’t failure. It may be the next room of the same house.

What changed was that he began to see himself more clearly. “I found I was able to stop myself from doing something wrong and, at the same time, uncover a new habit that I had been unaware of,” he says. “This was part of the process.”

Music without the rest

About a year after he began practicing, his music career picked up again. “Everything felt different,” he says.

For years he had believed that being a musician and using came together. “For so long I equated music to drugs, alcohol or being promiscuous,” he says. “I now reject such notions.”

He played drums for David Bowie, with the Chinese characters for Truth, Compassion and Tolerance on his drum kit.

The man who once blamed everyone around him found that anger loosening too. In 2002 he traveled with other Western practitioners to Tiananmen Square in Beijing to ask for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong in China.

Police detained them before they could unfurl their banner. “At that point, I wasn’t angry, I felt no hatred,” he recalls. He says he felt sorry for the officers instead.

He never claimed to be finished. “I’m still challenged with other obstacles, but I am determined to change them,” he said in his talk. “Falun Dafa has set me on the right path.”

The drummer who once hid in his apartment, sure that music meant drugs, went back out under the lights, without the things he once thought came with them.

What this story may hold for you

• Sterling had tried yoga, tai chi and therapy before anything shifted. If you’ve tried and tried, that isn’t proof nothing will work.
• The drugs went first; the jealousy and self-blame took longer. Perhaps quitting is the start of the story, not the whole of it.
• He found that seeing a habit clearly, even after the fact, “was part of the process.” You might be kinder to yourself about the slips.
• What he believed about his own world — that music meant drugs — turned out not to be true. Some of what keeps us stuck may be a belief, not a fact.
• A miracle might be the body healing, or the heart letting go, or finding meaning again — or any mix of these.

If anger at yourself or others is part of what you carry, Joel Chipkar’s story may speak to you too.

A free guide for letting go of what still burns

If this story touched something in you, there are more like it.

Our free guide, Letting Go of What Still Burns, gathers three true stories of people who were caught in anger and resentment — at others, and at themselves — and what slowly changed for them, with a gentle page on how to begin.

It’s free. One email with the guide, then a few short letters. Unsubscribe any time.

Questions readers ask

Q: How do you quit drinking and drugs when nothing else has worked?

Sterling had already tried yoga, tai chi and therapy, and for eight years he couldn’t stop. What changed it for him was a daily practice he began in a park: the exercises every morning, and reading Zhuan Falun. If you are struggling with drugs or alcohol, please also talk with a doctor or an addiction counselor near you; you don’t have to do this alone.

Q: How do I stop blaming myself for my addiction?

Sterling was, in his words, “very angry with myself” and would “constantly put myself down,” then turned the blame on everyone around him. Over time he learned to notice a habit, stop it, and see the next one — and to treat that as “part of the process,” not as proof he was failing.

Q: Where does this story come from?

From Sterling Campbell’s own talk, “My Cultivation in Falun Dafa,” in Falun Gong Stories: A Journey to Enlightenment (Golden Lotus Press), given when he was 35, and from Faluninfo.net’s profile “Sterling Campbell: A Musician Takes a Stand.” The quotes are his own words.

A note on health

These stories share personal experiences and inner journeys. They cannot replace professional psychological or medical help, and please don’t stop or change any treatment because of a story. If you are in serious distress or crisis, please reach out to a qualified local counselor, doctor or crisis line.