#1,606 – “Not an Addict”

By and large there are two kinds of songs about drug addiction: “Man, I’ve got to stop doing these drugs” (see “Down in a Hole” by Alice In Chains) and “Man, I wish my friend had stopped doing those drugs” (see “The Needle and the Damage Done” by Neil Young). Anyone can write the latter, but in order to write the former, you kind of have to be a drug addict. And really, that’s the only time you kind of have to be a drug addict.

This is why something about “Not an Addict” always seemed off to me. It was too polished, and too hungry to be a rock radio hit to be a convincing first-person look at drug addiction. And sure enough, the songwriter had never been addicted to anything harder than cigarettes, which makes this song just another “heroin chic” attempt to break it big in the post-Cobain era. So while this song rings fake to me, at least the Belgian siblings who founded K’s Choice are – unlike Cobain and a number of his fellow Seattleites – still alive.