Sorry to here you're feeling down there Dick...

You know, after working in the music business these past 50 years, whenever I hear news such as this it always hits me deep in the gut. Over these years I've experienced the loss of 11 people that I've worked with closely in the biz to suicides, overdoses or drank themselves to an early grave.

Sad sad sad . . . Two of them were in this band.

~OGD~

His performances gave me great joy, even when he played a creep.

Heroin is on a roll:

Hoffman’s Heroin Points to Surge in Grim Trade
By J. David Goodman, New York Times, Feb. 3/4, 2014

[....] Each of the packages, which can sell for as little as $6 on the street, offered a grim window into Mr. Hoffman’s personal struggle with a resurgent addiction that ultimately, the police said, proved fatal. And the names and logos reflect a fevered underground marketing effort in a city that is awash in cheap heroin.

Heroin seizures in New York State are up 67 percent over the last four years, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration said. Last year, the agency’s New York office seized 144 kilograms of heroin, nearly 20 percent of its seizures nationwide, valued at roughly $43 million. One recent raid, in the Bronx last week, netted 33 pounds of heroin and hundreds of thousands of branded bags, some stamped “N.F.L.,” a timely nod to the Super Bowl.

From 2010 to 2012, after several years of decline, heroin-related overdose deaths increased 84 percent in New York City to 382, according to the Health Department statistics. Staten Island, where prescription drug addiction has been especially virulent, has the city’s highest rate of heroin overdoses, though a connection has not been established.

Bags bearing different stamps turn up in raids of large-scale heroin mills around the city.

They are named for popular celebrities or luxury products [....]