Addictions and Recovery

^{In memory of Toby Keith. (I don’t think it’s too difficult to figure out the meaning of these lyrics.)}

In several previous blogs, I mentioned that as a biology professor, I used to teach a course entitled “The Biology of Addiction”, a course designed for non-majors. During the semester, I would give the students weekly quizzes on Fridays, just to check if they still had a pulse. Among the 14-odd quizzes during a semester, there were two which were open-book and cooperative. The first was to show how a drug will reach a steady state in the body if we know its half-life and the same dose is taken at the same time every day. The second, which is relevant to this blog and turned out to be one of the reasons students signed up for the course in the first place, was to come up with a 30-40 minute song list dealing with alcohol, drugs, and behavioral compulsions like gambling, and they got extra credit if they would burn a CD that we would use as background music during lab. Students generally had ALL the songs they needed to write the list on their smartphones, so they were able to complete this quiz very, very quickly.

Inspecting the lists showed a startling number of songs were in the country genre, and as it turns out, there are numerous songs in the country genre that deal with alcohol. In fact, Mark MacArdle wrote an article, Does Country Music Drink More Than Other Genres? Investigating 5 years of lyrics to find out ( https://towardsdatascience.com/does-country-music-drink-more-than-other-genres-a21db901940b), in which he compared the content of various genres and found the following:

Furthermore, this trend is consistent over the years:

There seems to be a transition, however, in the sentiment expressed in these country songs. In the past, the emphasis was on drowning sorrows and on lamenting loss, as in Merle Haggard’s The Bottle Let Me Down ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVq27glkY_A) :

“Each night I leave the bar room when it’s over
Not feeling any pain at closing time
But tonight your memory found me much too sober
Couldn’t drink enough to keep you off my mind

Tonight the bottle let me down
And let your memory come around
The one true friend I thought I’d found
Tonight the bottle let me down

I’ve always had a bottle I could turn to
And lately I’ve been turnin’ every day
But the wine don’t take effect the way it used to
And I’m hurtin’ in an old familiar way

Tonight the bottle let me down
And let your memory come around
The one true friend I thought I’d found

Tonight the bottle let me down
Tonight the bottle let me down”

Now, the emphasis is on getting smashed and enjoying it (https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/dec/02/does-country-have-a-drinking-problem)

For example, here is Jerrod Niemann’s Drink To That All Night (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1pMmg4_FWU):

Don’t look now oh the parkin lots full
Gonna ride that cow with a Dallas bull
Everybody in the ATL is comin
DJ’s got those speakers thumpin
Got a black ford not a white mercedes
Walkin in the front door checkin out the ladies
My buddy says hey boys I’m buyin
The hottest girl in here’s givin me the eye and

Everybody knows, its gonna be one of those
I can drink to that all night
That’s the stuff I like
That’s the kind of party makes you throw your hands up high
Bout to tie one on talkin gone gone gone
Turnin all the wrongs into right
I can drink to that all night

Workin on the sweet thing sittin on a bar stool
Doin shots of Jack girl gonna take it old school
Singin hell yeah to every song their playin
Do ya wanna dance? Baby I’m just sayin

Everybody knows, its gonna be one of those
I can drink to that all night
That’s the stuff I like
That’s the kind of party makes you throw your hands up high
Bout to tie one on talkin gone gone gone
Turnin all the wrongs into right
I can drink to that all night

I can drink to that all night

Take your cup fill it up
You can’t raise it high enough
Take your cup fill it up
You can’t raise it high enough

Everybody knows, its gonna be one of those
I can drink to that all night
That’s the stuff I like
That’s the kind of party makes you throw your hands up
I can drink to that all night
That’s the stuff I like
That’s the kind of party makes you throw your hands up high
Bout to tie one on talkin gone gone gone
Turnin all the wrongs into right
I can drink to that all night

I can drink to that all night
I can drink to that all night

Take your cup fill it up
You can’t raise it high enough
Take your cup fill it up
You can’t raise it high enough
Take your cup fill it up
You can’t raise it high enough
Take your cup fill it up
You can’t raise it high enough

An invitation to my readers:

I invite you, my readers, to write a 30-40 minute songlist pertaining to alcohol, drugs, or gambling, any genre, for or against, like my students did, and include URLs for the youtube videos, please. If you do, I will revisit this topic and share YOUR lists. Please feel free to use the Feedback form below — 🙂

P.P.S.: In memory of Toby Keith