The Tragic Truth About Stevie Nicks

This article contains references to substance abuse.

Stevie Nicks is synonymous with standout feminine energy in not just rock 'n' roll but in pop culture altogether. The Fleetwood Mac frontwoman has spent decades telling stories through song and weaving her "Gold Dust Woman" magic for millions of fans worldwide. But behind the scenes, the songstress has endured a lifetime of tragedies that have impacted her professional and personal life. From devastating losses of friends and family to harrowing health issues that have impacted her career, Nicks has seen it all — and she's grown stronger from it. Nicks is a singer, songwriter, actor, mentor, friend, and family member, and the lessons she's learned in life, both good and bad, have made for a rollicking journey that she doesn't regret. "I didn't ever have any doubts that this would be my life," she shared with Rolling Stone in October 2024. "I believe in me. I believe in the Church of Stevie."

Stevie Nicks first launched into fame as a vocalist with the famously fraught group Fleetwood Mac in the 1970s. During that time, she and then-partner Lindsey Buckingham experienced a tumultuous relationship both in and out of the recording studio. Their love affair not only inspired the band's seminal album "Rumours" but also inspired decades' worth of legendary performances, tributes, and even a book-turned-television series, all inspired by the heartbreak.

The pair first got together in the 1960s and partnered on several musical endeavors before moving to Los Angeles and joining Fleetwood Mac in the early 1970s. "They were immediately perceived as a sexy, star-bound couple," wrote Stephen Davis in his Nicks biography "Gold Dust Woman" (via the Los Angeles Times). "People who encountered them recall an aura about them, a radiance." The rock duo broke up while recording "Rumours," and a bevy of now-iconic songs were born. While the pair never reportedly got back together romantically, the band reunited several times over the next several decades to tour and record music together.

However, the contention between the two has continued over the years, with the pair last seeing each other at late bandmate Christine McVie's memorial service in 2024. "I dealt with Lindsey for as long as I could," Nicks shared with Rolling Stone in 2024. "You could not say that I did not give him more than 300 million chances."

As befell many rock stars of the 1970s, Stevie Nicks was subject to the continuous influence of drugs and alcohol as her star within and without Fleetwood Mac continued to rise. "It was amazing how when people talked about it, how not a big thing it was," the star said of the time to ABC News. "Nobody was scared. Nobody had any idea how insidious and dangerous and horrible it was."

The singer struggled with her addiction for years and spent millions of dollars feeding her habit. But it wasn't until she visited a plastic surgeon who warned her of potential issues with her nose that she decided to kick the habit. "I went and did a seven-month tour ... and I came home and I went straight to [the] Betty Ford [Center]," she revealed to ABC News. "And nobody had to make me go. I wanted to go as quick as possible." She has since recovered but has regrets over the amount of money she spent on the drug, wishing she would have spent that money on cancer research instead.

Cocaine was not the only substance that Stevie Nicks abused throughout her career. The entertainer was also once addicted to Klonopin, a habit she picked up after her doctor prescribed the drug to her after she left the Betty Ford Clinic. The medicine gradually impacted both Nicks' health and career, as she steadily gained weight and was left so cognitively impaired that she felt she was unable to write. "I would look at them, and I would just be sick to my stomach," she said of the pills (per Out). "I was feeling so awful. I thought, 'You are going to OD on something really stupid like NyQuil or Benadryl — over-the-counter stuff — on top of the Klonopin.' I thought, 'I'm definitely not going to go out that way.'"

Nicks decided to do a multiple-month detox, and while she experienced physical discomfort and appearance changes during that time, she has reportedly been clean ever since. But the threat that over-the-counter medications have presented extended beyond herself — she has even lost friends and family to prescription drug overdose. Naturally, she took to music to write out her heartache with the song "Mabel Normand." "I wanted it to be something that somebody having a problem with drugs can sit down and listen to 5,000 times," she said of the track to Out.com. "Try to let it be an epiphany for you, 18-year-old person."

A side effect of Stevie Nicks' addiction to Klonopin was weight gain, something that had added pressure to the singer throughout her career. By the end of the band's tour in 2004, Nicks says she was so bloated and depressed that she had hit rock bottom and was trying to stick to diet plans that just weren't working. "I was terrified to go off the Atkins [diet]," she admitted to Australian New Idea Weekly Magazine (via FleetwoodMac.net). "'When you get into its mindset, you're terrified to even have a potato. Then if you want to go off it to try another diet, you're even more terrified you'll gain weight."

Her turning point was lamenting the restricting corsets she was wearing and longing to wear more styles of the time. She switched over to Weight Watchers and had finally found a program that worked for her. Throughout the years, her weight has fluctuated, but she keeps moving forward. "That's another reason not to do coke," she told the outlet. "When you stop, your metabolism is messed up. I don't think you ever completely get it back. If I'd never done drugs I don't think I would have ever had an issue with my weight."

Stevie Nicks has endured a number of physical ailments that have impacted her daily life. She was diagnosed with Epstein-Barr disease as she was recording the album "Trouble in Shangri-La." The disease made her feel extremely fatigued, and while it doesn't impact her all the time, it can be triggered by depression or burnout. Then, in 2022, she was diagnosed with wet macular degeneration, which was similar to a visual impairment that her mother had suffered from. "I was seeing all these colors, big things of purple," she said of the disease to Rolling Stone in 2024. "I was having, like, acid trips. And I'm going, 'I'm not taking any acid, so I don't understand what this is.' Now, every six, seven, eight, nine weeks, I have to have a shot in each one of my eyes. That's going to be for the rest of my life."

It wasn't just Lindsey Buckingham with whom Stevie Nicks developed a more intimate relationship in Fleetwood Mac. She and namesake drummer Mick Fleetwood once shared in a torrid affair despite the former being in a relationship (with The Eagles' former drummer Don Henley) and the latter being married at the time. "[It] never should [have] happened. And we knew it from the beginning," she revealed to Vulture. "If there's anything I learned from that relationship, it was, 'Don't go after other women's husbands,' because it never works out. You are never gonna be the woman if you break up a marriage. You're just the home-wrecker."

Fleetwood described the affair, which took place during the Australian leg of the band's "Rumours" tour in 1977, in his memoir "Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac: The Autobiography." "We had a very bright moment," he wrote of the affair. "It wasn't an on-again-off-again relationship. It was on for the time it was on ... We were great friends before and we are great friends after and for that we are lucky and grateful that it is the case."

Even though she was riding the highs of fame in the early 1980s, Stevie Nicks once faced a horrible tragedy upon the death of her best friend from terminal leukemia. Robin Anderson, who had been Nicks' friend since the star was 14 years old, also became pregnant during her illness, which was a rarity. "She was the one person that knew me for the person I really was and not for the famous Stevie, and it was good to have someone who knew the real you besides just your mom and dad," she once shared on "Behind the Music" (via Far Out Magazine).

Anderson passed away from the disease, but not before giving birth prematurely to her son Matthew, sinking Nicks into a deep depressive state. But she saved some special mementos to share with her son when the time comes. "I have her life on film for 14, 15 years," she shared in the episode. "I have us on tape singing, I have a beautiful book that I wrote the year that she died, I have a roomful of stuff for him. I have his mother to give back to him when he's ready."

It wasn't just baby Matthew that Stevie Nicks tried to take care of upon her best friend's death. She also married her friend's widower, Kim Anderson, in a hasty and brief marriage of convenience as they both processed their grief. "It was a terrible, terrible mistake," she admitted on "Behind the Music" (via Far Out Magazine). "We didn't get married because we were in love, we got married because we were grieving, and it was the only way that we could feel like we were doing anything. And we got divorced three months later."

The fallout from the nuptials lasted many years, with Anderson and Nicks having a contentious relationship that prevented Nicks from seeing her best friend's baby son. "I suppose that Matthew will find me when he's ready," she lamented at the time. "I mean, I am, really, next to Robin, his mommy. But Kim and I can't deal with each other at all." Nicks eventually reunited with the now-grown Matthew in 2015, with the star continuing to support him through college and remaining in touch.

Stevie Nicks is no stranger to loss in her life, but the death of her former Fleetwood Mac bandmate Christine McVie in 2022 was particularly hard on the singer-songwriter. McVie died after suffering a stroke and from metastasized cancer at the age of 79. Upon learning of her friend's illness, Nicks was ready to fly to London to see McVie one last time, but at the family's wishes, Nicks stayed behind. "I needed to be with her," she told MOJO. "And I didn't get to do that. So that was very hard for me. I didn't get to say goodbye."

The remaining members of Fleetwood Mac reunited for McVie's Celebration of Life ceremony in early 2023, in which Fleetwood himself wrote and delivered the eulogy. "We all miss her as a family member, as a friend, an artist, a performer, and God knows, a writer of excellence," he wrote in the piece, which he later posted to Instagram. "And those years sharing life together will always be remembered." Without McVie's talents, Nicks has affirmed that there is "no way" the band could ever regroup. But Nicks continued to perform in her memory, even including a video montage of the two when she sings the band's classic song "Landslide." "The world is a little bit of an empty place without her," she told MOJO.

Stevie Nicks has also lost another legendary musician and friend in the likes of Tom Petty. Petty died in 2017 of an accidental opioid overdose. "He was one of my best friends," Nicks said of the musician at a pre-Grammys event in 2018 (per People). "My heart will never get over this."

The pair's friendship began as both of the artists' respective bands were beginning to make it big. "I just fell in love with his music and his band," Nicks shared in Warren Zanes' book "Petty: The Biography" (per Biography). "I would laughingly say to anyone that if I ever got to know Tom Petty and could worm my way into his good graces, if he were ever to ask me to leave Fleetwood Mac and join Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, I'd probably do it — and that was before I even met him!" The two collaborated multiple times over the years, including on the 1981 hit "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around." The pair performed the song together for the last time in July 2017 when Nicks joined Petty and his band, the Heartbreakers, on stage for what would be the final reprise. "You know that Tom Petty is my favorite rock star!" she said on stage (per BBC).

Of all of the loss that Stevie Nicks has endured throughout her life, both famous and not, her mother's passing was perhaps the hardest. "I didn't go [to the studio]," she shared with Scottish publication The Herald. "I didn't want to go. But it wasn't just that — I didn't want to go anywhere. I didn't leave the house for almost five months."

Nicks, who never had children of her own, even experienced a supernatural event following her mother's passing, recalling that even spiritually, her mother was always guiding her. The artist took much of her mother's wisdom to heart throughout her career and life itself. "She said to me: you will never stand in a room full of men and feel like you can't keep up with them," she told The Guardian. "And you will never depend upon a man to support you. She drummed that into me, and I'm so glad she did."

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse and mental health, please contact SAMHSA's 24-hour National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or visit their website.