Heroin and Comfortably Numb

"Comfortably Numb" is one of the best songs out there about depression. There's one point in this illness when you cannot feel more pain any longer and you just block out. There are no good feelings, no bad feelings, your emotional intelligence just gets thrashed down to smithereens and you can't feel a damm thing. You are numb and feeling like you've never been there.

Some 20 years later a group called Radiohead came and recorded the song "How to Dissappear Completely" and they nailed the description of what a depression is (IMHO).

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to me comfortably numb is about drugs, but not completely. the first verse is the doctor talking to him and asking questions, and pink sings the chorus answering to the doctors final question "can you show me where it hurts?" every single line of the chorus describes perfectly how it is to be on drugs, but thats not the only reason he is why he is. all the bricks in his wall also put him into his mental state because he is "numb" to the outside world and all of reality. just as the line "a distant ships smoke on the horizon" means. its like being stranded on an island and seeing a distant ships smoke on the horizon which is your help to get home safetly but also knowing it is out of reach and you will never be on it. thats the same he feels towards reality. he knows reality is way out there on the horizon but also knows he will never be back in it.

Agreed!

The idea that ot os about drugs I think is sad and would probally make me love this song less. To dedicate such moving lyrics and music to something as pathetic and meaningless as drug use isa waste in my opinion.

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Thanks.

Yesterday I watched a Roger Waters interview in the DVD "The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story". It's an extended edition where the extras are mainly the interviews they made to the members of the band in their full length. Roger Waters was talking about Syd's illness and recalls something that happened to him while he was recording "Wish You Were Here". It was a pretty tough time for him since the disagreements within the band were already quite strong (with Gilmour mainly) and he was going through the divorce of his first wife.

He remembers that one of those days when he was feeling really bad, in the canteen at Abbey Road, he saw reality zooming out of him. He lost perspective of everything ("you are receeding") and saw his hands as "two balloons" (much like when you've got fever as a child). He got really scared as he thought he was going crazy. He walked into studio 3, started playing piano and little by little reality and perspective came back to him. In that moment he realised how thin the line between sanity and insanity sometimes is and he also quotes this moment as one of the inspirations behind Comfortably Numb's lyrics.

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That is very interesting... Do you have a link to a website stating this? I want to learn the full story behind it. (If it's true)

Well, I haven't got a link. I could transcribe that part of the interview from my DVD and give you the DVD reference in any case.

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Well, here it goes anyway.

The DVD is "The Pink Floyd & Syd Barrett Story (The Definitve Edition)". It's a 2 DVD set. In the first one you've got the John Edginton's documentary plus the Roger Waters' interview they used for the documentary in its full length. In the second DVD you've got the David Gilmour, Richard Wright, Nick Mason and Robyn Hitchcock interviews in their full length plus an acoustic rendition of "Love You" by Graham Coxon.

The passage I was quoting is this:

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The one you gave me?

are you trying to say that elvis is god? 'Cause then i'd have to disagree with you. That's blashemy, by the way. And don't email me back saying something like, "take your religious ramblings somewhere else..." I didn't want to make this sound rude, but I guess it is...Sorry, Flughum...

Ummmm...I just realized that this email has nothing to do with the discussion. So I'll just bounce out of this here forum and into another. Sorry everyone!

Possibly. But, more than likely, "he" just "overdid" it on the "chocolate chip" "cookies". That's how I feel about it anyways.

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I highly doubt Waters used smack or was a junkie. I don't know Roger personally, and hard drug habits tend to be a very private thing so I dunno for sure. The lyrics Roger sang in Comfortably Numb always reminded me of a doctor administering a shot of morphine if anything. Seeing the live performance from The Wall shows drives that home even more imo. Roger sang the song wearing a friggin doctors coat!

i think it was made because he had nothing better to wright about...frankly i think it's about giving blood...haha no but like what makes u think it's about roger...i read an artical/interview with roger & it said he has done every drug except like injecting things...

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:n) <--roger :nD <---dave :n[D <---nick 8n) <---rick :~) <---syd

a guy i used to work with when CN came out ,swears he heard roger say that the song is continuation of DOGS...STRIK9's reference to live performance of roger with large needle is suppossedly Dr Waters administering morphine to guy dying of cancer in DOGS...