Addiction Special!  Some great Rock Music.

1. Under the Bridge.Red Hot Chili Peppers

Your band is doing great and you are shooting up under a bridge with random junkies you don’t know.

Yeah-addiction is like that. It does not give you anything—it just strings you along and sucks the lifeblood out of you. It leaves you a shell of yourself; any energy that you have will be removed and transferred to it. It is relentless-it is after you and you can’t stop.

But it makes for some great music. Those lucky enough to take it to the edge and escape (warning-results not typical, your battle may not turn into a hit song with an interesting story).

But nevertheless, great song!

1. She talks to angels.The Black Crowes

“Pain gonna make everything alright”

Watching someone battle their demons can be as bad as being sucked into the vortex of no hope yourself. It goes right to the feeling of helplessness that can drown you as you witness someone else drowning.

Of course each addiction problem is a little different as is each person a unique individual-but….but……but…this strikes so many in similar ways that is easy for the masses to relate, even in the third person scenario.

3.Hurt.Johny Cash

You get to the end of your run with nothing left to prove and instead of going quietly into that dark night- you decide to take an artistic high dive that will drag us all through the depths of hell with you to show us all that you do not take heaven lightly. You are the Man in Black and this song plays in my head like “Paradise Lost” plays in my soul. I don’t know what else I can say- inspired genius.

4.Joey.Concrete Blond

Here we go with a song about being the enabler in the addiction process. Ah, yes- that volatile mixture of love and addiction. Johnette has the gift of making everything extra real and relevant without making it a cartoon.

5.Back to Black.Amy Winehouse

Wow!-here I am echoing the sentiments of Amy Winehouse about putting together a bunch of depressing songs one after another. “I died a hundred times”-She is not just saying that-she is feeling those words. I don’t care if you accuse me of a stretch with this because I love this song and I don’t love “Rehab”.

Great music lends itself to many different interpretations- Maybe I am still coming down from my last post with Marvin Gaye but this song always cuts me up. The desperation and cry for help that went unheeded is haunting.

What a waste of talent and another sad victim of this disease.

Cheers from the cave…and think I will keep it to just the one pint tonight.