If you’re a professional musician, getting caught with drugs is like getting caught with more money than the rest of us. It shouldn’t be a big deal. Plus, the whole VH1 Behind the Music arc of rise-fall-redemption is so well-worn that it’s hard to sympathize when we hear that someone’s got a taste for the ol’ booger sugar.

But among the pantheon of drug busts, there have been some real beauties. These are the ones that exceed the expectations we have of celebrities to be just a little whacked out, proving them otherworldly gods and goddesses of narcotic excess and then prove them just that much more human in their ability to get arrested. Well, arrested and then almost usually let off with a slap on the wrist.

10. Amy Winehouse

Some may gripe that the modern queen of substance abuse doesn’t rank higher on the list. But there are a couple qualifiers here. One is her history of mental health, which colours her craziness in a way we’re not 100% comfortable with ripping on. But more importantly, it’s like, come on. She’s been busted so many times it’s hard to even care anymore. An Amy Winehouse headline in the daily news is about as run-of-the-mill as the daily Sudoku.

9. Gregg Allman

What a nark. In 1972 Allman brother Gregg got hauled in on a federal drug charge. Instead of facing his sentence, he ratted out bodyguard/tour manager/friend John “Scooter” Herring. It meant the end for the diluted, post-Duane Allman Brothers Band, which probably came as a relief to anyone waiting for that extended version of “Mountain Jam” to finally end.

8. Sebastian Bach

Though he’s been in the headlines more recently for trashing Fillmore’s Gentleman’s Club in Toronto, the former Skid Row frontman was booked in New Jersey for having some pot in 2002. But it wasn’t the weed that got him busted. It was more his continually threatening to shoot the bartender of the bar he was in for not letting him take his drink with him while he went outside to smoke. Bach would later go on to save face playing a bleary-eyed version of himself on Trailer Park Boys. Almost.

7. David Lee Roth

The (then-former) Van Halen frontman made headlines for the first time since being the frontman of Van Halen for buying weed from an undercover cop in New York City’s Washington Square Park in April of 1993. Though Roth described the dope as “$10 worth of Jamaican bunk reefer,” that didn’t stop him from getting slapped on the wrist and becoming a late night TV punchline. Still, they say any publicity is good publicity. Especially when you get paid to high kick around a stage in a catsuit.

6. George Michael

Being as George Michael is currently fucked up on pharmaceutical drugs, it’s hard to get far enough away from him to really tease him. So we’ll just report the facts. In 2007, George Michael was arrested in London after motorists reported him passed out in a car stuck at traffic lights. He pled guilty and wasn’t allowed to drive for two years. Whether or not you find it to be hilarious is your call.

5. Flavor Flav

Flavor Flav has always just seemed like the goofy cartoon version of Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Just look at his record. Sure, there’s nothing “goofy” about assaulting your girlfriend are trying to shoot your neighbour, but compared to ODB, he’s a lightweight. But unlike ODB, Flav eventually went to the Betty Ford Clinic after his family and friends pulled an intervention on him in the mid-90s following marijuana and cocaine charges. Now he’s a wacko reality TV superstar. That’s kind of silly. Isn’t it?

4. Donovan

We all know that getting caught with marijuana is child’s play these days. Circa 2010, being a rockstar who gets pulled over and not having some dope in the glove box is just poor form. But Donovan is remarkable because he basically started the trend after being the first rock superstar to get busted with pot, way back in 1966. He would eventually be one-upped, musically and psychotropically, by buddies like Paul McCartney and Brian Jones. But for one brief moment, Donovan was the original sunshine superman (whatever that means).

3. David Crosby

One time David Crosby got arrested for smuggling a billion pounds of heroin in his moustache. Nah, not really. But in 1985, while he was on probation, he got all messed up and drove through someone’s fence and then got busted for having a bunch of a drug gear and a revolver on him. Anytime he was grilled about why he was carrying the gun, he always answered the same: “John Lennon, man.”

2. ODB

We could put together our own top ten (or fifty) list indexing the legal troubles of this late, great, old, and rather dirty bastard. Hell, Dirt McGirt took to trouble like he did, er, crack. And not playing child support. But chief amongst the Dirty One’s length rap sheet was the time in ’99 when he got busted for crack possession, then busted out of a court-mandated drug treatment program to drop his sloppy science on some Wu-Tang tracks. This is the kind of shit that made Dirt Dog a modern day Stagger Lee, kids.

1. Keith Richards

When it comes to drug busts, Keith Richards is to emaciated, skeletal white dudes what ODB was to rap stars. Except somehow, inexplicably and as if in defiance of God himself, Richards is still alive. But the best of Richards’ busts? In February of 1977, the RCMP caught Richards in Toronto holding 22 grams of heroin. Not a small amount. Instead of going to jail, Richards convinced the courts to let him get off by playing two CNIB fundraisers in Oshawa. My roommate’s dad swears he knew a guy who pretended to be blind to get into the show. Now that’s legendary.