An article recounts musician Jack Bruce's recollection of Cream's history with drugs, pushing back on the widely told narrative that heroin use by bandmates Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker meant the whole trio regularly performed under the influence. Bruce has long maintained that the 1960s were not a period of heavy hard-drug use for him personally, and that Cream took their live performances too seriously to play while intoxicated, though he acknowledges his relationship with Baker was often strained and he may not have been party to what the other two got up to.

Bruce did, however, admit to one exception: performing at Liverpool University after taking LSD with bandmates before the show. He described a disorienting, hallucinogenic experience in which even the car journey there felt cartoonish and rubbery, and once on stage the neck of his bass guitar seemed to lose its solidity, making the performance "impossible" to play properly. He closed the anecdote with the view that drugs might make a musician feel they are playing better, but that playing sober is genuinely the best approach.