When I'm Up (I Can't Get Down)

I don't know, but this song makes my eyes teary...almost.

It makes me want to get my buddies together and get drunk.

According to the DSM-IV-TR, a hypomanic episode includes, over the course of at least 4 days, elevated mood plus three of the following symptoms OR irritable mood plus four of the following symptoms:

* pressured speech; rapid talking
* inflated self-esteem or grandiosity;
* decreased need for sleep;
* flight of ideas or the subjective experience that thoughts are racing;
* easy distractibility and attention-deficit (superficially similar to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder);
* increase in psychomotor agitation; and
* steep involvement in pleasurable activities that may have a high potential for negative psycho-social or physical consequences (e.g., the person engages in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments).

This is my interpretation of the song...

Up front, "I am the fountain of affection/I'm the instrument of joy" implies the singer does or has something that can lift a person's mood.

"And to keep the good times rolling" implies rolling, a term used when a person is high on ecstacy, a drug which makes whoever uses it have increased feelings of intimacy and diminished fear and anxiety, also reinforcing the first lines.

"I'm the boy, I'm the boy" clearly wraps up the implication that the singer is a drug dealer.

"The world could be our oyster" is a term which implies that one could have anything in the world. "If you just put your trust in me" reinforces the heightened sense of intimacy caused by ecstacy, and implies that the sale of drugs could bring enough money in to buy anything.

"A sweet disintegration" refers to a person taking a pill as it dissolves and is absorbed into the body.

"A few discolorations when it comes along" references the start of a psychoactive drug trip (caused by a drug such as... oh... ecstacy) which causes one's field of vision to become distorted.

"Up is what he chooses" imply that a drug user chooses to get high. Although one may become addicted to a drug, the user makes the decision to take the first pill which causes the addiction.

"the kisses and the bruises" imply sex, the feeling of which is heightened when using ecstacy, as well as violence common in the lives of many drug dealers and addicts.

"there ain't nothing he refuses" implies said drug user will try anything.

"it comes along and I am lifted" implies that the drug reaches full effect and the user is at the height of the trip.

"when I'm up, I can't get down" implies that once a user is high, there is nothing to do except wait out the effect of the drug.

"He just needs something to blind him/something to wind him up" implies that the user is beginning to experience a bad trip, and should be held down to avoid causing inadvertent harm to himself.

"Wise guys are grinning/streetlights are spinning" are what the user is seeing in his bad trip.

"The night is just beginning and it comes on strong" implies that the bad trip is not going to calm down soon, that he has all night to go before the trip ends.