During her time in San Francisco, accounts suggest she began using drugs, to the point when friends were concerned by her change in appearance and behaviour.
As a result, in 1965, she returned to her parents in Texas and enrolled in university, though she still performed in her free time.
According to Myra Friedman’s Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin, Janis sought counselling in this time in Texas, where she expressed her fears of falling into drug abuse if she were to seek a career in the music business.
Janis did decide to pursue a career in music, however, and joined Big Brother and the Holding Company, having been recruited by her friend, Chet Helms.
But in order to stay clean in the industry, she insisted that people who were doing drugs kept away from her.