I read recently that Paul Kossoff turned to heroin following a call from Eric Clapton asking him how he got his guitar to sound so good. The problem for Paul was that he could not reconcile his talent with his negative self image.
From Wikipedia: "Kossoff's drug use made him unreliable in the latter stages of Free. Andy Fraser noted "he felt intimidated by those other guitarists, and when people began speaking of him in terms of Clapton and so on, it frightened him. Drugs were a defence, his excuse"."
Some children are raised to believe that they are talented, able, superior. Other children are taught that they are worthless, useless, beyond hope of redemption. This can happen inside of the family system with one child being labelled as a Scapegoat and another as a Golden Child, or the split can be between class or education. Private schools encouraging most children to think of themselves as superior, as the ruling elite - and state schools encouraging thoughts of inferiority and submission.
This leaves us with a society where many Scapegoated people's talents are buried, while mediocre Golden Children dominate. This is a very inefficient use of resources. A healthy society would utilise the talents of all.
Worse still, the inculcation of the bottom line thought of 'I am no good' prevents the Scapegoated child from achieving because achievement feels inauthentic. This is the root of imposter syndrome, "I do not belong here because I am useless". This contrasts sharply with the Golden Child's thought, "I belong here because I am the best" - despite any evidence to back this up.
For Paul Kossof, I imagine that the need to try and live up to compliments which, in his mind, could not possibly be true, proved too much and he sought the escape of oblivion through drugs.
The bottom line thought of "I am no good" appears to underlie a great deal of psychological problems. It is drummed into children at such an early stage that it is very difficult to escape. Even when faced with masses of evidence to the contrary, the Scapegoated child persists with the belief that they are no good. How can we change this?
