I agree that there's double meaning here, but not solely in the words. Yeah, there are the words of someone who's depressed, feels disconnected from people and doesn't have hope in the world - the people are all zombies, or emotionless fish that just stare at him with blank eyes and they actually all long for the Sun. But wen I hear the music, another layer of interpretation emerges:
The music in the chorus is so much up-beat, full of energy, optimistic, in the total contrast to the first line of strophes "life's too short to care at all".
I think it's about someone who's very cynical, and can see many of advises people say, give, and, yes, sell, are just full of crap; fictional constructs which don't help him at all, cause IF everything that should help him, that should show the truth, the right way to live/ deal with depression/ deal with problems IS true, that he should have found that fortune ages ago! But he didn't loose all of the hope, cause of the sudden energy surge he puts in the line "If I could find a way to see this straight I'd run away". He wants it so bad, he repeats it many times and emphasizes it specifically after the guitar solo with just the words, without the music...
But that moment still didn't come, he still is lost and sad and all he can do ISN'T to kill himself, though he does feel the urge sometimes - the wet world calls him to jump into the water - but to soldier on; to keep on hurting, but keep on searching, keep on hoping.
And so he goes back to the best thing available, the "cough syrup", weak substitute for the real cure, which will probably in the long run do more harm than good, but that's all he has right now. All the self-help get-better-in-a-day, find-the-Truth-for-59.99$, join-our-religion-our-deity-loves-you-more-than-any-other,-no-really! schemes are false ("So I run to the things they said could restore me"), but they are all he's got right now.
So he goes on one spoon of the cough syrup at a time.
I agree that there's double meaning here, but not solely in the words. Yeah, there are the words of someone who's depressed, feels disconnected from people and doesn't have hope in the world - the people are all zombies, or emotionless fish that just stare at him with blank eyes and they actually all long for the Sun. But wen I hear the music, another layer of interpretation emerges: The music in the chorus is so much up-beat, full of energy, optimistic, in the total contrast to the first line of strophes "life's too short to care at all". I think it's about someone who's very cynical, and can see many of advises people say, give, and, yes, sell, are just full of crap; fictional constructs which don't help him at all, cause IF everything that should help him, that should show the truth, the right way to live/ deal with depression/ deal with problems IS true, that he should have found that fortune ages ago! But he didn't loose all of the hope, cause of the sudden energy surge he puts in the line "If I could find a way to see this straight I'd run away". He wants it so bad, he repeats it many times and emphasizes it specifically after the guitar solo with just the words, without the music... But that moment still didn't come, he still is lost and sad and all he can do ISN'T to kill himself, though he does feel the urge sometimes - the wet world calls him to jump into the water - but to soldier on; to keep on hurting, but keep on searching, keep on hoping. And so he goes back to the best thing available, the "cough syrup", weak substitute for the real cure, which will probably in the long run do more harm than good, but that's all he has right now. All the self-help get-better-in-a-day, find-the-Truth-for-59.99$, join-our-religion-our-deity-loves-you-more-than-any-other,-no-really! schemes are false ("So I run to the things they said could restore me"), but they are all he's got right now. So he goes on one spoon of the cough syrup at a time.