LOS ANGELES, Oct. 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Multi-Grammy-winning bassist Stanley Clarke has played alongside legends like Herbie Hancock, Paul McCartney and Quincy Jones. In a recent interview on the Go With Elmo podcast with Elmo Lovano, Clarke recalled being a teenager and experimenting with drugs when an encounter with Chick Corea changed the direction of his life.
Drugs and alcohol have taken a steady toll on musicians throughout Clarke's career, claiming the lives of artists who became cultural icons and whose early deaths are still remembered decades later. "I know some people even have the crazy idea that there's something heroic about it," he said. "It's not. It's a sad thing."
"A lot of musicians took many drugs and abused alcohol." Among those Clarke lost were close friends. One loss from the 1980s still stays with him. "He should still be here," Clarke said.
Clarke said he was nearly part of that story. "I was 18 messing around with drugs, and I was on the fence," he recalled. When Corea first came to his apartment, Clarke said he expected to get "extremely high that night." Instead, Corea gave him a copy of the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard.
"I read Dianetics probably 15 times. The book helped me a lot," Clarke said.
Dianetics introduces the concept of the reactive mind, which L. Ron Hubbard described as retaining painful experiences that can continue to affect a person long after the original event. Clarke connected the idea to his own experience: "When you fall down and you hit your head at 12 years old, you might think that's it. But it stays with you."
Clarke said the ideas in Dianetics ultimately helped him make a decisive change in his life. "What I was really interested in at the time was what was happening in the mind. I was so fascinated with what I was reading in the book that I just stopped with the drugs."
Established in 1981, Bridge Publications, Inc., located in Los Angeles, California, is the publisher of the nonfiction works of international best-selling author L. Ron Hubbard. Its facility serves regions including North and Latin America, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
For more information, visit www.dianetics.org.
Sara Lucatero
Bridge Publications, Inc.
sdinges@bridgepub.com
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