According to AllMusic, drummer Nicholas "Topper" Headon joined The Clash in 1977, just in time for their first album, but the relentless schedule led to a premature end to his marriage. That's also when he developed substance abuse issues. "I went on the road and discovered booze. All I did was drink, drink, drink. Then Mick [Jones] turned me onto coke and all I did was coke," he said (via The Independent).
By the early 1980s, Headon took to doing drugs during concerts, snorting cocaine between songs. After The Clash's roadies introduced him to heroin, the band forced Headon into a drug rehab program in 1982. He resumed his cocaine use during a European tour and earned a suspension from the band, but then Clash singer Joe Strummer let slip to a reporter that he'd actually fired Headon for his destructive drug use.
His dismissal became the inciting incident for even more drug use, and a switch from cocaine to heroin. "I just stuck needles in my arm, which I'd never done before," he said. By the late 1980s, Headon had so exhausted his funds from The Clash, on drugs, that he took a job as a cab driver, and then a busker, banging on bongos in the London Underground subway station. "Every hundred people who passed, there'd be one who'd stop and ask, 'Are you Topper Headon from the Clash?'" he recalled. "It was so humiliating."
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