Comfortably Numb

Everyone has a right to their interpretation; however, some works lend themselves to interpretation more than others. Roger Waters wrote the lyrics. (Gilmour has a music credit--both this and "Run Like Hell" were intended to be used on a solo album.) The song is not about drugs. It is a part of a very clear narrative about a performer who found, after reaching financial and popular success, that he had become completely alienated from his audience, from his associates, family, friends, and even his former self. On the road in America, away from his home in England, he is aware that his last meaningful relationship (with his wife) is also falling apart. He is suffering a nervous breakdown.

Syd Barrett was the only member of Pink Floyd who ever did drugs regularly. The others took themselves, perhaps, a bit too seriously. The character ("Pink") certainly seems addled in his hotel room when you watch Bob Geldof's performance, but if anything it looks like some low-grade alcoholism and ennui, which fit Roger Waters much better (dour, rich, brilliant, but disgusted with what he has become--Montreal, Animals tour).

At his low point, depressed to the point of catatonia, a doctor tries to revive him for the evening's concert. At his weakest, most distant moment, he is finally able to connect to his past, to his youth--to a time when, in fever dreams, his hallucinations felt the same as his current extreme alienation.

As the adrenaline kicks in, Pink holds on to the fleeting memory of childhood and reflects on what has changed. In youth, meaning always seemed to be just around the corner, just out of sight, with the promise that experience and age would bring life's mysteries into focus. As an adult, having achieved his "dreams," he realizes that they were meaningless and that he has lost his soul along with his dreams.