10 Classic Rock Songs That Were Written About Drugs

The entire rock scene was in for a pretty dark period once the Beatles decided that they weren't going to be making music anymore. John Lennon and Paul McCartney had already started to have their differences, and John was starting to use heroin to numb the pain of all the tension that came with his business ventures, along with his girlfriend Yoko being blamed for the Beatles' breakup. John always laid it out in his music, and the minute he got clean made for one of the most abrasive songs of his solo career.

While this was also around the time John was starting to seek help from Arthur Janov for psychotherapy, he also managed to kick his heroin habit cold turkey, which made for some of the worst physical conditions he had ever been in in his life. Though he did censor himself from time to time by saying the song was about him getting food poisoning as a result of eating cold turkey, it gets pretty literal towards the end, where John practically simulates an episode of withdrawal with some agonizing adlibs.

He didn't shy away from the subject when he was performing either, announcing that the song was about pain during the performance that appears on Some Time In New York City and stretching it out to epic proportions, jamming more and more until it became a cacophony of noise. Psychotherapy may have helped him come back down to Earth, but John could easily use his music to vent his pain as well.