Eric Clapton

Music became a healer for me, and I learned to listen with all my being.

I have no problem with religion, and I grew up with a strong curiosity about spiritual matters, but my searching took me away from church and community worship to the internal journey.  Before my recovery began, I found my God in music and the arts, with writers like Hermann Hesse, and musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter.

It's very difficult to explain the effect the first blues record I heard had on me, except to say that I recognized it immediately.  It was as if I were being reintroduced to something that I already knew, maybe from another, earlier life.  For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall.