EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide and addiction. If you or someone you know is struggling or needs support, the national Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by calling or texting 988. Support is also available online at 988lifeline.org.
For songwriter Jamey Wolff, a tape recorder from Radio Shack was a gateway drug. With the click of a button and the whir of a cassette tape, the 10-year-old in Salisbury, Maryland, was transported — out of his body, where his skin felt like ill-fitting clothing, and into the many melodies inside his mind.
“I remember walking around and around and around in circles recording the songs coming into my head,” said Wolff, who would pace his parents’ home, where there were no dividing walls to get in the way.
Now 35, Wolff is a Montague-based musician who moved to western Massachusetts two years ago with his wife and 2-year-old daughter, who pulls him into the moment just like music can, with a grace that allows him the space to reflect on the 25 years between then and now. Following back surgery as a teenager, Wolff was prescribed Vicodin, a pain relief medication that combines the opioid hydrocodone with acetaminophen, which led to years of overwhelming addiction.
In the throes of his spiritual anguish, Wolff remained tethered to possibility through music. While his own opportunities dwindled, he felt less alone knowing that artists like Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’s John Frusciante had openly battled with substance use and mental health issues. Now in recovery, but still struggling mightily with his own humanity, Wolff is here to let others know there is no shame in suffering.
What if addiction was actually a form of self-protection, a way to insulate against a world that felt too much to bear? “A lot of people you might not suspect are really breaking down inside,” said Wolff, who has an upcoming gig at The Rendezvous Restaurant in Turners Falls on Aug. 28. “I wonder what could happen to our culture if more people started openly talking about what’s going on.”
Higher powers
It’s confusing to live in a culture where musicians are gods and self-destruction can elevate an artist’s craft.
“When I was younger there was this idea of the rock-and-roll cliché, the Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith, Jimi Hendrix ‘it’s better to burn out than to fade away,’” said Wolff, who said whose identity was informed by that mythology. The famous lyric is from “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue),” the opening song on Neil Young’s 1979 album “Rust Never Sleeps.”
For Wolff, who played in the band “The Inflatable Lovers” in Maryland and Washington, D.C., sound was as enticing as any substance.
While he doesn’t prefer to be labeled or boxed in by a descriptor, Wolff said, “You wouldn’t be wrong to call me neurodivergent … I just have memories of being fully brought into a sound,” like the hum of a bees’ wings or the crackling of rustling leaves. “The noises that seem to be background for most people come to the front of my attention,” he said.
It’s possible that that sense of immersion in that auditory opiate, coupled with the cultural permission he felt to lose himself in music and drugs, was the perfect storm for addiction. “It felt free, then it very much felt like the opposite of freedom,” Wolff said of using substances.
Addiction may start out as an otherwise unattainable ability to let go, but it can be a violent descent into what is often referred to in 12-step culture as “rock bottom.” The 12 steps were published in 1939 in the book “Alcoholics Anonymous,” where Bill Wilson laid out a recovery program grounded in a connection to a self-defined Higher Power.
Wolff endured seizures, comas, suicide attempts and eventual brain damage before he was able to get clean, first through 12-step meetings and, more recently, through more holistic forms of healing such as yoga and mindfulness. He believes that treating addictive behavior is just the tip of the iceberg, and that part of his mission is to get to the heart of what made using appealing in the first place. “For me, it’s just an inability to be okay in my body and in the world,” he said.
The data suggests that a staggering number of people may be wrestling with that kind of shame. The 2025 National Survey on Drug Use and Health reports that 18.5 million adults have a co-occurring mental health condition and substance use disorder. But according to estimated accounts by Alcoholics Anonymous, less than 2 million people worldwide were engaged in 12-step recovery as of 2021.
Wolff has a “gnawing” and cruel inner critic that he has countered with a more positive voice, like that of “Buddha, Christ, Krishnamurti and Eckhart Tolle, which when you hear it you know it’s true. It’s the thing in us that doesn’t want for anything other than the peace of the present moment.”
Full circle
While Wolff feels that he has an “allergy” to self-promotion, he recognizes that the songs that resonated with him in his darkest times wouldn’t exist “without having been pushed out into the world.”
In April, he released “in media res,” a play on the Latin phrase for “in the middle of things,” which is where Wolff finds himself now.
The album features “Narcissus’ Ugly Ghost,” a song selected for a New Music Alliance Radio Hour by a nonprofit that showcases the music of local artists.
“There was devil’s dandruff in Caleb’s coffin / My bloody arm stained your duvet / There’s gang violence in the cherub’s garden / And junky love down by the bay,” begins the track.
“Could there be another way away from the way things are / Aren’t we all just the sun & moon & stars after all / Stuck with Sisyphus’ sister & Narcissus’ ugly ghost / Could you tell me who you hate so I can tell you who I love the most.”
The artist believes that his music “balances emotional immediacy and existential urgency” with “unpolished, direct and human” songs. Now, his sensitivity and his empathy are two of his greatest strengths.
The act of performing isn’t particularly pleasant, but when seen as a means of connection, it’s invaluable. “I don’t enjoy being in front of people,” said Wolff. “But when I force myself to do that uncomfortable thing, and I’m able to get in the flow state when the song came to me and bring somebody else into that, that feeling overrides all of the gnawing self-doubt.”
For Wolff, that moment of connection — to others, to something beyond him — is the high he’s always been chasing. “I would say it’s a high, in a non-nefarious or ominous sense,” he said. “Probably for me, along with moments with my daughter, it’s the closest to fully being in the present moment.” Music, once a doorway to self-destruction, is now a window into everyone’s potential to heal.
Becoming part of the western Mass. music scene has certainly been healing for Wolff, who said that when he was still using, it was “such a lonely place, and for me music was a full-fledged saving grace.”
“Music is more powerful than some people give it credit for,” he continued. “It changes the collective energy of humanity.”
In September, Wolff will release “The Inflatable Lovers Vol. 3,” a collection of remastered songs that starts with two new tracks. Volumes 1 and 2 are available on his website: jameywolff.com.
In addition to his upcoming gig at The Rendezvous Restaurant in Turners Falls on Aug. 28, Wolff will play with Couchboy at Luthier’s Co-op in Easthampton on Oct. 17.
Melissa Karen Sances can be reached at melissaksances@gmail.com.