There are songs that paint a vivid picture of drug and alcohol abuse and there are songs that glorify it.
Think Bob Dylan “Rainy Day Woman” (lyrics: “Everybody must get stoned” or The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” which heralds the ecstasy of tripping on LSD.
For this list, I focused on the former. These are songs that describe addiction vividly. Most of these artists know what it’s like to be stuck in the spider hole of addiction. They’ve lived to tell these cautionary tales.
1. Nine Inch Nails – “Hurt”
Trent Reznor wrote the most beautiful, awful song of the ’90s. “Hurt” is packed with doom and despair with a self-injuring, heroin-junkie narrator. Nine Inch Nails are consistently dark, but this is the band at its darkest. This song oozes with depression. It is the sound of pitiful existence. The strung-out junkie trapped in isolation.
I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything
The quiet, near-whisper of a song crescendos in a fury of distortion and feedback.
Nota bene: The Johnny Cash cover of “Hurt” may be even better than the original, and the music video – made just before his death in 2003 at age 71 – is cinematic and heart wrenching.
2. Guns N’ Roses – “Mr. Brownstone”
A deep cut from Guns N’ Roses’ 1987 instant-classic debut Appetite for Destruction – the album that featured hit singles “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Sweet Child O Mine,” and “Paradise City” is also a song about heroin. “Dancing with Mr. Brownstone,” as heard in the chorus, is shooting heroin. In the lyrics, Axl Rose chronicles the progression of the disease of addiction.
I used to do a little
But a little wouldn’t do it
So the little got more and more
It’s unclear whether Rose ever actually did heroin, though he did have a problem with cocaine and alcohol. However, bandmates Slash and Steven Adler were bona fide heroin junkies.
3. Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel – “White Lines (Don’t Do It)”
The cocaine ’80s are on full display in this song from avant-garde hip-hopper and Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee Grandmaster Flash. That unmistakable booming baseline is infectious and tailor-made for the dance floor.
Ticket to ride
White Line highway
Tell all your friends, they can go my way
Pay your toll, sell your soul
Pound for pound costs more than gold
The longer you stay, the more you pay
My white lines, go a long way
Either up your nose or through your vein
With nothin’ to gain except killin’ your brain
It’s also a breakdancing anthem and the perfect hook to deliver an anti-drug message.
Most songs describe the sordid experience of drug addiction. This one is literal, a rare call-to-action on why people shouldn’t do drugs.
4. Tool – “Sober”
Tool is the enigmatic ’90s project of Maynard James Keenan. They’re not exactly metal, not quite a hard rock band, they’re just Tool. This tune emphasizes the struggle of addiction to alcohol. Keenan’s declaration of “Why can’t we drink forever” is a sentiment all alcoholics can relate to.
Why can’t we not be sober?
I just want to start this over
Why can’t we drink forever
I just want to start this over
I am just a worthless liar
I am just an imbecile
5. Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Under the Bridge”
A lonely, ambling trip through Downtown LA sets the scene for this 1992 addiction anthem from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The blockbuster single hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 – not bad for a song about heroin. The tune climaxes with a chorus of singers chanting the following:
Under the bridge downtown
Is where I drew some blood
Under the bridge downtown
I could not get enough
Under the bridge downtown
Forgot about my love
Under the bridge downtown
I gave my life away
Lead singer Anthony Kiedis has struggled with addiction throughout his life. His father was a drug dealer and he smoked pot at the age of 11. But it was heroin that hooked him. Kiedis went to rehab in 1988 and was sober for five years, relapsing on and off throughout the ’90s. He is sober today.
6. The Velvet Underground – “Heroin”
The Velvet Underground are one of the most underrated bands in classic rock. The proto-punkers and favorite band of Andy Warhol’s – led by lyricist, guitarist, and singer Lou Reed – were among the most influential bands to come out of the ’60s, yet ask passersby on the street who they are and few would know.
And no song better describes the experience of being on drugs than the band’s 1967 classic “Heroin.” Reed should know. He was an infamous addict.
Heroin, be the death of me
Hero-o-innn, it’s my wife and it’s my life
Because a mainer to my vein
Leads to a center in my head
And then I’m better off than dead
Because when the smack begins to flow
I really don’t care anymore
But I’m not just talking lyrically. The song pulsates with pep. It takes the listener on an expedition of what it feels like to inject heroin. The kick drum mimics the heartbeat of the junkie – slow when he’s sober, fast when he’s high. Dissonant feedback toward the end emulates the chaos of addiction. Pitch perfect.
7. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis – “Starting Over”
Friend of the gays, the Grammy-winning Macklemore is the first white rapper to be taken seriously by the hip-hop community since Eminem. The video for “Same Love” – made in support of same-sex marriage – was a break from the macho, oftentimes homophobic hip-hop culture. But it is “Starting Over” that chronicles the rapper’s relapse on his addiction to alcohol and Oxycontin.
Macklemores signature slow flow and intimate delivery style are perfect for a serious topic like addiction.
This one is unique in that it focuses on addiction as a family disease.
Those three plus years, I was so proud of
And I threw ’em all away for two Styrofoam cups
The irony, everyone will think that he lied to me
Made my sobriety so public, there’s no fuckin’ privacy
…
Uh, what the fuck are my parents gonna say?
The success story that got his life together and changed
And you know what pain looks like
When you tell your dad you relapsed then look him directly into his face
The seat on your shoulder’s the seemingly heavy weight
Haven’t seen tears like this on my girl
In a while the trust that I once built’s been betrayed
But I’d rather live telling the truth and be judged for my mistakes
Macklemore is sober today after a relapse in 2011. He and Ryan Lewis won four Grammy Awards last year.
8. Metallica – “Master of Puppets”
In what may be the best metal song of all time, Metallica came out roaring in 1986 with the epic “Master of Puppets” – the iconic anthem to the album of the same name. Addiction is a quagmire. And it’s described here to a T.
I’m your source of self-destruction
Veins that pump with fear, sucking darkest clear
Leading on your death’s construction
Taste me you will see
More is all you need
You’re dedicated to
How I’m killing you
Come crawling faster
Obey your master
Your life burns faster
Obey your master
The song refers to “chopping your breakfast on a mirror” (cocaine) and alludes to the idea that drugs are in control (“Master of Puppets pulling your strings”).
Metallica was notorious for their hard-partying ’80s, even earning the band the nickname Alcoholica. Frontman James Hetfield is indeed a recovering alcoholic and went to rehab in 2001, an event documented in the 2002 film Some Kind of Monster. He is still sober today.
9. Neil Young – “The Needle and the Damage Done”
This one’s intimate to the extreme. It features folk singer Neil Young on solo acoustic sans drums. The legendary Young never partook of heroin. He was an alcohol-and-weed kind of guy who got sober in 2012. In this quiet opus, he identifies the epidemic of heroin abuse surrounding him.
I’ve seen the needle
And the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie’s
Like a setting sun
10. Eminem – “Going Through Changes”
Eminem has discussed his addiction to prescription painkillers very openly. At one point, he was popping 40-60 Valium a day and 20-30 Vicodin. Every single day, according to Rolling Stone.
Now I’m popping Vics, Perks and Methadone pills
“Yeah, Em, tight verse, you killed it”
Fuckin’ drug dealers hang around me like yes men
And they gon’ do whatever I says when I says it
It’s in their best interest to protect their investment
…
Inside I’m dying
I am finally realizing I need help
Can’t do it myself, too weak, two weeks I’ve been having ups and downs
Going through peaks and valleys, dilly dallying
‘Round with the idea of ending the shit right here
Suicidal thoughts are part and parcel with being an addict, but luckily we didn’t lose Em to this ugly disease of addiction. Eminem has been sober since April of 2008 and continues to make relevant hip-hop music to this day.
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What about nutshell by Alice in chains?