Even before the electric guitar was invented, popular musicians loved to partake of all manners of forbidden fruit. Hard drinking was nothing new, but opium, absinthe and marijuana gained footholds at the dawn of the 20th century. One of the music world's first major casualties to narcotics was jazz great Charlie Parker, a bebop saxophonist who died in 1955 from pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer brought on by years of heroin abuse.
