10 Best Songs About Drugs

When looking at the ten best songs about drugs, there is a clear delineation between two schools of thought.  The first school of thought is that drugs are bad.  The second is that drugs are good.  Whichever school of thought you subscribe to, here are some songs you might like.

1. “The Needle And the Damage Done” Neil Young.  Heroin is easily one of the most destructive illegal drugs in existence, particularly among the music community.  This song about a heroin-addicted bandmate of Young’s is one of the most well-known anti-heroin anthems.
2. “Heroin” The Velvet Underground.  Lou Reed was one of the many musicians to battle heroin addiction.  This song by his band The Velvet Underground is about that addiction.
3. “Hurt” Nine Inch Nails.  OK, so this is the third song in a row about heroin addiction.  There are a wealth of good ones to choose from, though, and this is another one of the best.  It is also one of Nine Inch Nails’ best songs, and the cover version by Johnny Cash is every bit as good.
4. “Cocaine” Eric Clapton.  Heroin may have been the drug of choice for many musicians, but cocaine has enjoyed its fair share of popularity, too.  It fueled a lot of guitar-based rock, particularly in the '70s, and that included much of Clapton’s music. 
5. “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” The Beatles.  And then, of course, there’s LSD.  What would the '60s have been without it?  It led to some bad trips and bad music, but it also gave us “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and in particular this song from it.  There is much debate about whether or not this song is actually about LSD, since John Lennon himself claimed it was about a picture his son drew, but acid aficionados have made it their own regardless.
6. “White Rabbit” Jefferson Airplane.  Songs about LSD in the '60s were indeed a dime a dozen, but this is another one of the most recognizable.  It referenced Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” as a metaphor for tripping on acid, which in turn made many of the song’s stoner fans feel more literate than they actually were.
7. “Because I Got High” Afroman.  This song was made famous by its appearance on the soundtrack for “Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back,” a movie aimed squarely at the young stoner demographic.  Rather than being squarely pro-marijuana, though, it is a laundry list of all the things that Afroman could have accomplished if only he hadn’t lit that blunt:  cleaning his room, passing his classes, getting promoted at work, paying child support.  Or is pot just the convenient excuse for not doing those things?
8. “Hits From The Bong” Cypress Hill.  From the squarely pro-marijuana camp comes any song ever written by Cypress Hill.  This is one of their most famous, and so it is on this list as a placeholder for their entire oeuvre.  They really liked weed.  A lot.
9. “High Till I Die” 2Pac.  The title of this song was somewhat ironic, given that Tupac ended up not actually having that much time to get high before he died.  He made the most of the time he had, though, smoking blunts and often rapping about it.
10. “Ecstasy” jj.  Ecstasy has been the drug of choice for many ravers and party-goers since the late '90s, and few songs encapsulate the feeling of being high on E more than this track from Swedish band jj.  “If you get a hug,” the song goes, “guess what drug I’m on.”  If they wanted us to guess, they probably shouldn’t have put it in the title.