War On Drugs Lyrics
Think what you'd like about this song, but it saved my life, as silly as that sounds. I've attempted suicide twice and was only saved because people who cared about me found me before it was too late. When I finally decided to "fight for my sanity," every time I felt as if suicide was the right thing to do, I'd listen to this song. Literallly, the song is about a woman who got married, was left, sprialed downwards, and had no one there to catch her. But it's also about society as a whole - we don't do enough to take care of each other. We fight the pseudo "war on drugs" without bothering to find out why people turn to drugs, self-harm, and suicide in the first place.
"What good is that when you live in hell on earth?" What an amazing lyric, because it's spot on about everything someone who's suicidal is thinking. Nothing matters because nothing will make the pain go away.
caraface ... great reply. I hope you are doing well and staying strong. I'm glad you had friends and family there for you in your time of need.
caraface ... great reply. I hope you are doing well and staying strong. I'm glad you had friends and family there for you in your time of need.
This song just makes me cry, pretty much every time I hear it. When I saw BNL in concert, Steven Page introduced this song by saying that the whole verse with the viaduct actually happened in Toronto, and concluded with something along the lines of "We as human beings need to take better care of each other."
I also think this is a social commentary: How come we as a society have spent billions of dollars (unsuccessfully) fighting the war on drugs, but so little attention has been given to the human side of that--the pain that drives people to drugs? And what about people who are in pain but not on drugs--how is it that the best we can do for them (OK, I'll admit it, [i]us[/i]) is to put up a net that doesn't even stop anyone?
This song also makes me very sad almost every time I hear it. Easily the best song on the album.
oh I LOVE this song it is so sad
oh I LOVE this song it is so sad
Steven Page did a long introduction to this in BNL's recent Glasgow gig (May 1). The song's based around the story of the Bloor Street viaduct in Toronto, which was a suicide hotspot with people jumping to the "cars and trucks below" on the Don Valley Parkway. Apparently it got so bad that one person was committing suicide by jumping from the bridge every 22 days at one point making it the #2 suicide spot in the continental US behind the Golden Gate Bridge. A massive campaign was launched and eventually succeeded in getting "a net there to catch their fall".
People did stop jumping but then moved to the next bridge down the road and jumped from there instead.
Steve said: "I thought, 'how ridiculous, how futile to try and stop people'. But the more we've been singing this song, the more I talk about it in the shows I realised that fundamental to everything I believe in is that we're here on earth to take care of each other. And we can express that in our politics or our religions or songs or the way we deal with our families and friends and strangers, but the second we stop holding our arms out to catch people as they fall is the second we lose our humanity. This song is for people who've lost the will to survive and lost the fight against themselves to stay alive."
Oh, and coincidentally, it's my favourite song on the album. Beautiful.
this song is klike my favorite. it was written about suicide (i heard from a concert) it is such a pretty song
very good song
its remarkably well written.
Making it the #2 suicide spot in the continental US? Toronto, Canada?