Love Is a Drug

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

When Ian Dury sung about Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll he covered not only the Rock n Roll lifestyle but also the majority of musical lyrics. There are songs about sex, songs about drugs and songs about dancing to and appreciating music itself.

However, it's seems Dury was getting into the Redundant Department of Redundancy because so many songs treat sex or love as though it is a drug. Well after all there are only so many appropriate metaphors out there so the ones that work will turn up a lot.

Certain lines recur in these songs. The love gets the person high, it elates them, being away from it will make them crave it, they will be addicted to it, they feel like they are floating, they have a loss of appetite and so on. A bit of Truth in Television, as the early stages of romantic infatuation will mess with the brain's dopamine levels in much the same ways opiates will.

Sometimes these songs can throw the interpretations into a tail spin with people thinking that songs that are actually about drugs are this and vice versa.

Examples of Love Is a Drug include:
  • "Addicted To Love" by Robert Palmer is laden with this trope from top to bottom.
  • "Kiss From A Rose" by Seal uses it straightforwardly in several places with lines like "Love remained a drug that's the high not the pill" and "you're like a growing addiction" as well as the uncertain interpretations of his eyes getting large and what a kiss from a rose actually is.
  • "Your Love Is My Drug" by Ke$ha.
  • The similarly named "Your Love's A Drug" by Leighton Meester:

I like it, I want it, the way you make my body move
I think I'm addicted, I'm high off everything you do
(...)
I need it, that feeling, rushing through my veins again
Whenever you're leaving I feel withdrawal kicking in

Love is like oxygen.
 You get too much, you get too high;
Not enough and you're gonna die.
Love gets you high!

  • P!nk's song "Just Like A Pill" compares the singer's interest to an addictive drug in pill form, who, instead of making her happy, is bringing her down.
  • Britney Spears' "Toxic" is clearly about drugs in reverence to love/lust/infatuation et cetera.
  • This appears to be what "The Perfect Drug" by Nine Inch Nails is about. That, or actual drugs.
  • "Love is a Stranger" by the Eurythmics includes the lyric "love is a dangerous drug".
  • Queens of the Stone Age have a song like this, titled "Like a drug", natch.
  • "Hooked on a Feeling," best known in the version by Blue Swede.
  • "Intoxication" by Disturbed.

"A dialogue between that which intoxicates, and its victim. A person, substance or lifestyle."

So now what can I do?
I'm strung out, addicted to you
My body aches now that you're gone
My supply fell through...

"Hug me till you drug me, honey;
Kiss me till I'm in a coma:
Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny;
Love's as good as soma."

  • "You and Tequila" by Kenny Chesney compares the temptation of a lover to the temptation one faces when trying to overcome drinking.
    • Also by Kenny Chesney: "Being Drunk's a Lot Like Loving You"
  • "I Can't Stay Away" by The Veronicas
  • "The Drug In Me Is You" by Falling in Reverse
  • "A Hard Habit to Break" by Chicago takes the metaphor a little further, showing that the singer compares his post-breakup situation to the pangs of withdrawal.
  • "A Little Love" by Vanessa Amorosi compares Love to cigarettes.
  • "Lithium" by Evanescence is a double up, A guy who she loves is her drug and she needs him to function, but also she addicted to the pain she feels and on purpose puts herself down because THAT is also a drug, which directly relates to their relationship which is based upon sadness.

Lithium, I wanna stay in love with my sorrow
Darling I forgive you after all, anything better then to be alone
 

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