Think of the context beginning with the album title. "Loaded" is a double entendré that can mean extremely high on drugs as well as full. New York was awash with heroin in 1970, both the low-grade Brown that Jimmy and Ginger would use, and the higher purity white that Polly and Joanna can get. Junkies would sell the shirt off their backs and shoes off their feet for a fix. Nodding off from a dose of heroin often resulted in a posture of having one's head on the concrete sidewalk. Addicts were often rolled for everything they had left in such circumstances.
When Polly is high on smack, she can't tell night from day. Joanna might be turning tricks during the day and calling it love, but at night she takes the money she made from her Johns, ties off, shoots up, and nods out. Lou was much more explicit about the subject in Heroin. Waiting for the Man was also about scoring smack. All this I say from living in New York in the 1970s and losing a wife to addiction.
Think of the context beginning with the album title. "Loaded" is a double entendré that can mean extremely high on drugs as well as full. New York was awash with heroin in 1970, both the low-grade Brown that Jimmy and Ginger would use, and the higher purity white that Polly and Joanna can get. Junkies would sell the shirt off their backs and shoes off their feet for a fix. Nodding off from a dose of heroin often resulted in a posture of having one's head on the concrete sidewalk. Addicts were often rolled for everything they had left in such circumstances.
When Polly is high on smack, she can't tell night from day. Joanna might be turning tricks during the day and calling it love, but at night she takes the money she made from her Johns, ties off, shoots up, and nods out. Lou was much more explicit about the subject in Heroin. Waiting for the Man was also about scoring smack. All this I say from living in New York in the 1970s and losing a wife to addiction.