Grimes Did Homework for Taiwanese Loan Sharks to Pay for Drugs
Grimes builds her artistic image on sci-fi and fantasy lore. But the musician’s life story sounds more like a crime drama. The singer-songwriter has been open about her past drug use and how it affected her growing up. And recently, she revealed she did homework for Taiwanese loan sharks to pay for drugs.
Grimes’ early life
Growing up in Vancouver, Canada, Grimes spent time around drugs, drug dealers, and other negative influences. She even compares her younger self to the teenagers on Euphoria. The musician began to experiment with drugs at an early age. She first tried LSD when she was 13 and quickly moved to harder substances. According to Grimes, her closest friends’ deaths made her think about her substance use before it got her too.
The singer’s frankness about her past has exposed her to trolls and misconceptions. In 2014, Billboard noted how one quote from two years earlier kept coming back on Wikipedia and misrepresenting her stance on hard drugs. An upset Grimes took to Tumblr to call out the trolls for spreading a false narrative about her experiences with drugs.
“Losing people to drugs and alcohol is the worst because they destroy any good memories you have of them before, forcing you to deal with the space they leave behind,” she wrote (per Rolling Stone). “I don’t want that to be part of my narrative, and if it has to be, I want people to know that I hate hard drugs. All they’ve ever done is kill my friends and cause me to be unproductive.”
Grimes doesn’t want people to see her as someone who glorifies drug use, especially younger fans. Instead, she wants her story to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of such a hard-hitting lifestyle.
Grimes did loan sharks’ homework to pay for drugs
Grimes recently told Vanity Fair that she was a mix between Euphoria‘s Rue and Jules, often finding herself in precarious situations. One such predicament was when she got caught up with Taiwanese loan sharks to pay for drugs. Though the singer didn’t elaborate — the story takes up just one line of the article — the fact that it’s not the central thesis shows how much Grimes has going on.
According to Grimes, her grandfather was an antiestablishment free-thinker whose destructive ways bled down to her family. It caused her to grow up rapidly and get some of this out of her system early. However, though the singer is not shy about discussing her drug use as a teen, she doesn’t want people to take the same path.
The musician speaks through her art
Grimes has always been open about her demons through her lyrics. In 2017, rapper Lil Peep died at just 21 years old. After hearing the news, she wrote the acoustic ballad “Delete Forever.”
It includes some of her most personal insights about drugs’ impact on society, with lyrics like, “Lying so awake, things I can’t escape/Lately, I just turn ’em into demons/Float into the sun, f***ing heroin.”
She spoke to Inquirer.net in February 2020 about the song’s meaning.
“I guess it’s kind of about the opioid epidemic. I’ve had quite a few friends pass away. In particular, one friend, when I was 18, passed away from complications related to opioid addiction. Artists keep dying and stuff, so I wrote this song,” she said.
Though music and drugs have always been connected, Grimes wants to show people the dangers through her experiences. Her story might sound like a crime drama, but now that she’s a mother of two with a loyal fan base, she wants to be a source of hope for others who might face challenges like hers.
How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.
