 |
"Doing
acid or downers or uppers or whatever all that stuff was, Yellow Sunshine,
Orange Sunshine … that was part of what everybody did," she says.
The drugs didn't keep her from the lure of music. She had joined a
band and played in small clubs on the East Coast, but also entertained
hopes of becoming a child psychologist. |
Then
came heroin. Her boyfriend, she says, was a drug addict who shot up
heroin regularly, and she wanted to try it. She says she was intrigued,
curious and perhaps rebelling, telling the world: "Maybe I'm not who
you want me to be, I'm who I want to be." She first snorted it and
was soon injecting it. "It takes over your life. It takes over your
brain. |
It takes over your body,
and it takes over your soul," she says.
Without enough money
to pay bills and support her drug habit, Cole resorted to desperate
measures, like forging checks, and - for a short time - working
as a prostitute.
"I was just on that self-destructive
path. And
|
 |
anyone who is an addict
will tell you this same thing," she says. "No matter what is at
stake, the only thing that you want is to get high."
Despite her drug habit,
Cole managed to keep her troubles quiet and was still on the road
to fame.
But in 1975, police found heroin in her hotel room
|
in Canada. Cole was arrested
and given three months probation by a sympathetic judge.
Six months later, still
using heroin, Cole got so violently ill from the drug that she decided
to go cold turkey. She says it was a miracle - the work of an angel
on her shoulder.
'Pure,
Fresh, Almost Heavenly Air'
Her drug habit kicked, Natalie's career
|
began to really take
off. Two years after walking the streets of Harlem as a come-on
girl and also as a prostitute, Cole's
first album, Inseparable, won two Grammies.
In 1976, she married
Marvin Yancy, her songwriter and producer. Together, they had a
son, Robbie, and Cole's life seemed to be coming together.
|
|
W
O
M
E
N
|
