He beat his decades-long addiction for his son… and it proved to be the best decision he ever made.
It’s no secret that Waylon Jennings knew how to party, as he was very open during his lifetime about how much he struggled with a cocaine addiction. At the peak of his addiction, he was spending $1,000 a day on drugs, as were friends like Johnny Cash.
Waylon recalled during his 2001 CMT Inside Fame episode that he finally saw the light and realized how much he was hurting those around him. While Jennings acknowledged the anguish he was putting his wife through, this seemingly simple act with Shooter was the final straw for him:
“He came over and sat down and put his arm through my arm and colored for about an hour or something like that, maybe more. That was the first time he was able to do that because I was so scattered all the time, you know. I thought, ‘Well, this is it.’”
Drawing with his five-year-old was the moment that changed it all. After that shared moment, he went to Jessi Colter and told her that he was done for good. He then gave the remainder of the drugs and handed them to Jessi to throw away.
“I heard her in the bathroom, pouring it down the commode, hollering, ‘Hallelujah, praise the Lord. Hallelujah, praise the Lord.’”
When Waylon did finally quit his bad drug habit for good, he did it cold turkey, instead of going to a hospital or rehab facility when he was ready to quit, like his friend Johnny did. Waylon decided to rent a house out in the Arizona desert, clear everything on the calendar, and camp out there until he was clean and had everything out of his system.
And if that sounds crazy, that’s because it is, and of course not the way any medical professional would recommend doing the process, but we all know that Waylon was simply a different breed. It worked for him, though, as he stayed away from drugs for the rest of his life, and Shooter had an incredible father as a result.
During a recent interview with CBS Sunday Morning about the next the archival album of Waylon’s never-before-heard music called Diamonds, Shooter opened up about how his father’s drug addiction did… or more so, did not, affect him as a kid. Shooter explained that it bothered his dad a lot, but it didn’t affect him “one bit” because he was so young when Waylon quit:
“You know, he did, of course. But it bothered him so much, like, it didn’t affect me one bit. When I was a kid, he quit by the time I was like five or six, and I think once he won the battle is when he realized he didn’t need it anymore, you know. And he was a great dad.”
He’s lucky that he didn’t remember the years when his dad was on drugs, and it’s really a testament to the man Waylon was and how badly he wanted to be an incredible dad:
“Yeah, I do miss him. Of course I miss him, but that’s not why I cry. I get emotional because I feel how important this all is.”
Shooter says he simply wants people to know “the guy I know,” and he has found a new purpose in carrying on his dad’s legacy in this way:
“I want everybody to know the guy I know, and I think I’m in a place where I’m in the studio and I’m able to put this out there, and people will get it and hear it. So I feel like that should be my purpose in a way.”
It’s a noble quest, and I know fans absolutely cannot wait to hear all of the new music, and the album is set to be released on November 13th as a physical copy, and on streaming platforms on December 11th.
So far, Shooter has only put out one song from Diamonds, which is the title track, and features Glen Campbell on guitar:
The full interview is available below.
