Moth

....more to number 2... after listening to it again. The beginning says "thought I was different seems I'm just the same" means he thought whatever or whoever it is... would have a different effect on him, or maybe he would have a different effect on it (if it was a person). "It turned out the way it does with everyone" means he got burned, later singing "I don't fly around your fire anymore." This really seems to me like he's talking about a lost love. The person just uses people, and finally he sees that they are damaged in that...

....more to number 2... after listening to it again. The beginning says "thought I was different seems I'm just the same" means he thought whatever or whoever it is... would have a different effect on him, or maybe he would have a different effect on it (if it was a person). "It turned out the way it does with everyone" means he got burned, later singing "I don't fly around your fire anymore." This really seems to me like he's talking about a lost love. The person just uses people, and finally he sees that they are damaged in that way.

@vsG734 I created an account to reply to your post because I think it's a very, very good interpretation and I want to add my two cents to it. So even if this comes across as a criticism, just know that I totally agree with the first interpretation, and could see the second interpretation being a possibility.

@vsG734 I created an account to reply to your post because I think it's a very, very good interpretation and I want to add my two cents to it. So even if this comes across as a criticism, just know that I totally agree with the first interpretation, and could see the second interpretation being a possibility.

I think it was about addiction, 100 percent.

I think it was about addiction, 100 percent.

"I thought I was different, but it seems I'm just the same." Every addict thought they would be different, and start using with their own little oddities 'to avoid addiction.' For me, it was honesty....

"I thought I was different, but it seems I'm just the same." Every addict thought they would be different, and start using with their own little oddities 'to avoid addiction.' For me, it was honesty. I thought if I just didn't lie about it, the people around me would notice me in free-fall and stop me before it became a proper addiction. Well, as it turns out, it's easy to just avoid people and dodge around the truth, and that's exactly what I did and continue to do today, making me better at manipulating, deceiving, and lying to those around me because I don't lie nearly as often as your average addict.

"As again I put my hand over the flame." This recontextualizes the first line, and I think you could read them either separately or together, and you'd be correct. He's very simply saying he relapsed. Together with the first line, he's saying that he got clean and thought he could just fool around with it a little bit, but he's a fool for thinking so.

The next two lines reiterate the first two in an ode to Icarus.

"I don't fly around your fire anymore/burned and fallen down so many times before." I'm not sure if these are the words of a recovered addict or an addict who just relapsed and is now swearing they'll never use again, because I've said just about the same thing a million times and I wind up right back in the same situation. IMPORTANT - I think when he says, "Your," fire, he's not talking to a person, but literally to the drug, heroin. It's Figurative Language 101, although I've forgotten the term for things like POP, CRACK, and SNAP so many times it's not even funny.

Gonna speed through the rest. The next stanza expresses his love of the high, and seems to say he even love how it binds him. I directly relate to everything he says about the high. The heat could refer to the intense feeling of getting high. The things that he forgot probably refers to the fact that he was compelled into drug addiction by something from his background - depression, self-loathing, poverty, abuse, etc. - which getting high allows you to shove to the back of your brain. The line about being tied down I genuinely don't relate to, it could be that, since he was rich and had fairly steady access to it, he even liked the fatigue of coming down since he knew he could always get more? But the rest of the stanza tells the classic tale of feeling like a damned king while high, and I relate to that as well: stories of my golden moments, where my inhibitions ran low and my comedic genius ran like a wildfire.

So, yeah, I feel your interpretation was fairly accurate, and your second interpretation could be accurate, although if it is, it isn't obviously autobiographical (as in, if it is, it's probably not about Chris Cornell, since I've never heard anything about him being in an abusive relationship of any kind, except his abusive relationship with heroin).

But to reply to your own addendum, it can be rather different to distinguish from a person pining for some lost love and their drug of choice. "Man, I really miss the way they made me feel," could mean Dorothy, the girl next door who used to be so sweet to you, or it could mean heroin because that person is needle junkie. I'm assuming you either aren't an addict, in which case you obviously can't directly relate to something like addiction - and good, I hope after all these years you've kept it that way - or you're not...

But to reply to your own addendum, it can be rather different to distinguish from a person pining for some lost love and their drug of choice. "Man, I really miss the way they made me feel," could mean Dorothy, the girl next door who used to be so sweet to you, or it could mean heroin because that person is needle junkie. I'm assuming you either aren't an addict, in which case you obviously can't directly relate to something like addiction - and good, I hope after all these years you've kept it that way - or you're not a massive nerd who reads everything they can find about a musician they like. Either way, good, don't do that and instead have an actual life unlike me, to which both of those things do apply.