Get Yourself Straight

They all want to fix me
Play tricks on me
Slip around me
Try to keep me grounded
Of sound mind and body
So I can be
The friend they need to be
But basically a lean-on
Be on time for meetings
When I meet them at the bars
Driving 'round the stars
Of the inner circle

They don't want to work
They don't want to try
They don't want to help me
They just don't want to
Watch me die

It'd be too much trouble
To get a three-piece suit
Root around in their closets
Or put a deposit on a tux
See their lives once again
Go into a flux
Over the death of a friend

So they keep telling me
Telling me, over and over
Get yourself straight, man
You gotta get yourself straight

They have their addictions
But they won't support mine
That's fine by me
But what I can't see
Is how they're going to be up
At three am when I need a friend
To tell me I'm not dying again
When my yen for destruction
Rears it's ugly head
Who's going to help me advance
When chances are they never got past
The textbook's introduction

I'm sick of being sick
But I'm sick of my doctors too
I'm through sitting in waiting rooms
My whole life I've been waiting
Debating just finding a bridge
Or a ridge with a view
And seeing myself into the blue
Just always seems
Like a selfish thing to do

But nothing as selfish
As shooting up
Next to your newly minted
Rehab grad pal

They tell you to abandon
Your life
Because it's rife with sickness
And everyone around you
Is infected with it
Like a zombie movie
Where you're the only sane one
Or are you?
Are you sane?
If they're all crazy?
Doesn't it flip?
Trip you up sometimes
To think that maybe
Those thirty days
Were a waste of your time?

You can't start over, can you?
You need stability
They tell you that
But then they tell you
Get rid of them
Get rid of them all
They're all going to fall
And they'll take you down
With them

They tell you that you have to learn
To live and yearn in a world
Where nobody is in recovery
But when you discover that people
Aren't willing
To put their sins away
To keep you clean
What it means to be cured
Making people sure that they can
Damn themselves in front of you
And it's okay
And it's okay
And it's okay

You sometimes wonder
How you got yourself straight
In the first place
And even though you did
How you gonna keep yourself
That way?