By the late 80s they had ended up as a really good cover band playing Grateful Dead material. Though there were flashes of brilliance even then, I had a hard time getting up the energy to hear anything but local shows.
I didn't (and don't like) taking the drugs myself, though there was always a contact high / breathing the atmosphere that would tune me up. But the drugs just got in the way of the music.
You're talking about rock music and the Dead. Drugs were the catalyst, an essential aspect of the musical experience for many of the performancers and the audience. But you're totally right, drugs were the solvent too, dissolving focus, talent, and brilliance to fade away. It's a risk and (sometimes fatal) attraction, I think largely due to the lack of cultural knowledge for responsible and sustainable recreational drug use.
(That was back when the hippies were in charge, before the frat bros took over.)
Q: What did the Deadhead say when he ran out of marijuana?
A: "This music sucks!"
;)
I saw a bunch of Flying Other Brothers concerts, who started at an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) benefit at The Fillmore Auditorium in 1997, and occasionally backed Bob Weir and Mickey Hart!
Dr. Halsted was one of the "Big Four" founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and lived until 1922 - 70 years old. Addicted to morphine for much of his adult life.
Opiates are dangerous and highly addictive and people should stay away from them except for serious pain management. However they aren't going to do the kind of cumulative organ damage that cigarettes and alcohol abuse do.
I believe opiates do mess with your hormones, which could have subtle effects which do affect lifespan, but yeah, I mostly agree. Opiates won't seriously damage your health if you are responsible.
However, their later popularity and touring in the late 1980s turned into a really pathetic spectacle. Some of this was likely related to Jerry Garcia's heroin addiction (which undoubtedly contributed, along with other factors like smoking cigarettes, to his early death at age 53). Dead shows of the period were well known as the place to go to score the best heroin among druggie circles of all kinds. This all predated the opiate marketing game and the rise of the pain pill clinics, whose results can be seen wandering the streets of any major American city today.
It's really a kind of sad tale, but I still like their early music (the vast majority of which wasn't taped with any quality).