As a recovering heroin addict with 3 years sobriety, of course I can identify with Layne Staley's point of view on this song
There is no doubt in my mind that this song is Staley's statement to the section of our population that automatically labels drug use (especially heroin) as criminal, disgusting, or sick ("Seems so SICK to the hypocrite norm"), while having absolutely no clue as to how aware and functional someone is on heroin. The mere fact that it is illegal to possess or use it, makes blind followers of government policies think someone who is high is no doubt a bad and evil person. The fact of that matter is: People who use drugs are not "criminal" minded. They are not evil or bad, and they're not on a mission to break the law or cause anyone any trouble at all. Layne Staley knows this all too well, for he was a user. He knew that when he was high, he functioned fine and was "Content and fully aware". A far cry from what good old Aunt Gertrude down the street was told repetedly over the course of her life, and anyone else like her who never happened to be close to someone who used drugs.
I think Staley has a mocking tone in the lyrics, like a over-confident cockyness about him. Right off the bat he writes about fooling his new dealer into paying for the partying that night by convincing him to stay high. That's BALLS right there! When you are in a band known world-wide, knowing millions will read these lyrics, and you talk about how high you're trying to get by outwitting a drug dealer, that's cocky in my book. He doesn't just hint at getting high like bands have been doing for years, he comes right and explicitly tells it like it is in the very first verse.
Not only does he tell it like it is without any fear of someone criticizing him, He brags as well. He talks about how he'll take anything ("What's my drug of choice? Well, what have you got?"), and brags that he also gets high a hell of a lot without breaking his bank ("I don't go broke, And I do it a lot"). And that is a HUGE statement right there - "I don't go broke"...... most drug users actually go broke because first of all, drugs are so expensive being an illegal black-market commodity, and secondly, it feels so good for a while at first that the user chooses to buy more and more drugs while slowly (but SURELY) they start taking the rent and bill money to stay high all the time. Staley is laughing in the face of whoever he is talking to (I believe the mis-informed public on drug usage) by saying he can do what 99 out of 100 people can't: stay high and stay rich. Of course, 'tis MUCH easier to stay high and not go broke when you sell millions upon millions of records and collect large sums of cash when touring. So he really didn't have the mental strength in my opinion to limit his drug use so he didn't go broke like other drug users, he just had money coming out the wazoo at a steady pace. He could blow every penny on coke and heroin one week, and the next week he would have tens of thousands of dollars again from radio-play royalties and CD sales. It's one thing to boast about having self control - if in fact one has it, but it's another to brag about one's self control when in reality it was unlimited funds, not self control.
Those words - "I don't go broke, And I do it a lot" - turned out to be the deciding factor in his death. Because he was so rich, because he never went without his drugs like any normal addict, because the non-stop usage brought his tolerance to heroin so fucking high, he had to shoot massive amounts in his veins to actually feel the drug. I know first hand how this works, my tolerance increased 3 times that of what I first started shooting - in three weeks. I went from needing 3 dime-bags to feel it, to 9 or 10 dime-bags to feel it all within 3 weeks. My tolerance sort of leveled off later on, but nevr stop rising evn if it was one bag more every 3 months. The longer I used the more my tolerance went up (never down or stayed the same) untill eventually I could not afford to get high any more! I went into treatment and got clean (thank God, I was a fucking mess). This is where tolerance killed Layne, because he could afford it, he never got serious enough to quit. He simply neede to use more than his body could finally handle. From what I hear, he locked himself in a hotel room fr days and days, no one knowing where he was, doing massive amounts. It was so bad folks, that when he got an abscess on his hand from sn infection cause by an in-sterile needle, it turned to gangrene and he LOST A COUPLE OF FINGERS without ever leaving that hotel and seeing a doctor. He just laid there and got super-high for days, looked at his gangrenous hand with missing fingers, and was too hight to make a rational decision. WAY TOO HIGH. Then he died. Cantrell was looking for him for days before his death but could not find him. He wanted to start playing together again.
This is the problem with drug use, because of it's illegality, people hide and sneek and feel like outcasts, eventually driving them completely underground without any positive relationships like family for instance. That turns to behavior that is harmful to one's self. Alcohol, the legal drug, is more lethal, mind altering, and mood changing than heroin, cocaine, and crystal-meth COMBINED. But because of its legalness, people don't have that label stuck to them like heroin users have. That "criminal" label. Therefore drunks don't have to hide, they don't have to pay top dollar, their drug is always 100% of the time pure and safe (relatively speaking!), and they aren't cast out by family and friends for using something that is legal (for the most part). A drunk will be many times more likely to get help from others in a crisis than a druggie would. They are looked upon as nice, law-abiding citizens with a problem of liking booze way too much.
All this hypocritical behavior by most of the mis-informed public that I'm writing about is how Layne Staley felt as well. Not so much "felt" but KNEW. It's a fact: drug addicts are unfairly labeled to be bad or stupid or both. And if the criminal stigma attached to drug use was taken away, heroin users would be considered much more stable and respon The fact is, while high on heroin one can function quite well, be able to think clearly, work hard, and act very polite and mature in social situations. Not so with an alcoholic.
Layne wrote this song to poke fun at the utterly rediculous views some people have about drugs. He is somewhat obnoxious about it because I feel he was aggravated by having to live the dual life necessary when being addicted to heroin. It gets old fast. No one like to hide and be looked at as a criminal. He was lashing out, giving the finger to a society that just does not understand how ignorant they are, while being hypocritical at the same time. Also in the song he pokes fun at society's obsession with status and money. He taunts and intimidates them, letting them know they won't even get close to understanding about drugs in school ("You can’t understand a user’s mind But try, with your books and degrees"). He lets everybody know how to learn what it's all about ("If you let yourself go and opened your mind -
I’ll bet you’d be doing like me - And it ain’t so bad")and I just know deep down that he had a shit-eating grin when he wrote those last 3 lines.
The lesson to be learned by the things this song brings up, is that drug use simply does not pay in this day and age. It killed Layne Staley way too early in life, at the prime of his career. Maybe in another time, another place, he would have lived. Maybe he wouldn't have tried to stash himself away like that and drug himself to death if our country had different views on what we decide to put in our own bodies. We might never know. How many over-doses do we have to hear about in the news, in the papers, IN OUR OWN IMMEDIATE OR EXTENDED FAMILIES. We all know someone who was or is an active user. Don't turn your backs on them when times get rough, you just might save their life.
