POP MUSIC : Heroin’s on the Comeback, but Happy Mondays’ Ryder Is on the Road Back

HOSPITAL REPORT: Meanwhile, on the Kurt and Courtney front, the couple’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was born Tuesday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in West Hollywood.

The conditions of mother and child were said to be good last week. It was unknown, however, what affect, if any, Love’s past drug use may have had on the baby.

Love, who has acknowledged heroin use in the very earliest stages of her pregnancy, was registered at Cedars-Sinai under an assumed name. Prior to the birth, a pregnant woman identified by a hospital source as the San Francisco-born singer was receiving daily doses of prenatal vitamins and methadone, a heroin substitute used to treat narcotics addiction. The woman’s admission record lists Cobain as her husband and Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson as a second contact. The woman entered Cedars-Sinai on Aug. 7, records indicate.

Dr. David Murphy, medical director of Exodus, a leading Southern California drug rehab program, says that the methadone treatment is typical for heroin addicted pregnant women.

“The standard of practice throughout the country at this time is that a heroin addict that is pregnant shouldn’t detox during the pregnancy,” Dr. Murphy says. “Right or wrong, the standard practice is to continue the use of methadone through the pregnancy and deal with the chemical dependency when the pregnancy is over. And when the baby is born, then the baby is chemical dependent and it will go through methadone detox. Babies go through that well.”

Earlier this month, an article in Vanity Fair magazine quoted a pregnant Love as saying she had used heroin for a couple of months after becoming pregnant. Love later denied making the statement, and her management repeated last week that she stopped using the drug as soon as she found she was pregnant. Through the pregnancy, Love was under the care of a physician specializing in chemical dependency.