Cocaine Original Version

[Claude]

Cocaine" is a song written and recorded in 1976 by singer-songwriter J. J. Cale. The song was popularized by Eric Clapton after his version was released on the 1977 album Slowhand. J. J. Cale's version of "Cocaine" was a number-one hit in New Zealand for a single week and became the seventh-best-selling single of 1977.

A live version of "Cocaine" from the album Just One Night charted on the Billboard Hot 100 as the B-side of "Tulsa Time", which was a No. 30 hit in 1980. "Cocaine" was one of several of Cale's songs recorded by Clapton, including "After Midnight" and "Travelin' Light". AllMusic critic Richard Gilliam called it "among [Clapton's] most enduringly popular hits" and noted that "even for an artist like Clapton with a huge body of high-quality work, 'Cocaine' ranks among his best."[8]

Because of its ambiguous message, Clapton did not perform the song in many of his concerts; over the years, he has added the lyrics 'that dirty cocaine' in live shows to underline the anti-drug message of the song.[10][11]A live version of the song does appear on Clapton's 1982 hits compilation Time Pieces.

I'm probably way off with this, but would it be right to assume the line "getting stoned" then is in reference to the 'debris' of gravel or something similar flying up at him whilst he's riding down the highway?

Agree with it being a great song, I really love it when Bruce just vents at the perpetrators in his songs relating to war, the "Robert McNamara says he's sorry" line in The Wall is a great example of that off the top of my head.

Most songs on that album have rather obscure lyrics/lines (Last to die / Magic / Devil's Arcade / You're own worst enemy / I'll work for your love) and I think it was done on purpose. I see this writing style as a feature of the album as much as its sound.

Agree. It's "countin' white lines AND gettin' stoned." Its a song about a biker. Were he to be "snortin'" or sniffin'" white lines, it'd be a no brainier, but would then detract from the verse, because he's just getting off his face, he's not riding. The line as it's best understood now, is that he's riding his machine and getting stoned. It also fits far better into the grand arc of themeatic Bruce. Another traveller. This one riding into a monotonous nothing.

I agree it's a drug reference, probably heroin, and I agree there's a drug reference in Gypsy Biker. It's a marijuana reference, most likely. He says he's gettin' stoned. That's the drug reference. The countin' white lines is the road.

He's out countin' white lines. You powder your pain with cocaine and you're probably in, not keeping track until it's gone. And again, gettin' stoned isn't really used to describe the cocaine euphoria. I'm not saying it hasn't ever been used that way, but stoned usually refers to something more relaxing, almost always pot or pills, but heroin, too. I don't include heroin in this argument because I have serious doubts that a guy who's snorting heroin is conscious enough to be out riding his bike.

I haven't heard of this theory before. For me, it was always the road and its white lines. I haven't really thought about the meaning of getting stoned as it was obvious to me.

Being logical, if you are counting the lines, you probably have a significant number of lines to count, not just a couple. It is a repetitive, monotonous act. I have zero knowledge about cocaine, but the numbers of the lines probably don't exceed several per hour. It doesn't make sense to count them. You know how much you had taken without the actual counting.

Of course, this is true. The audience has its own interpretive input. However I think what the OP is about is about looking at what the intention of the writer is. Or at least, what was at the forefront of the writer's mind.

This reminds me again of the Elvis Costello story about getting a letter thanking him for his lovely song about a boat trip - Shipbuilding - as he said, they're entitled to that interpretation, but no, that's not what I intended.

The "white lines" as coke interpretation, is so outside of the scope of the song, and Bruce's overall thematic concerns, that it makes it unlikely that that is what he intended. That a listener might read it as that is something else entirely.

My mate, David, years ago, heard Streets of Philadelphia, when he was an addict, and believed it was speaking to him, about his drug addiction, and of course it was. Even though we know that the specific remit of the song, was to give voice to someone with AIDS. Of course Bruce left it so open, that it could be about pretty much any existential crisis a person is having.

Thats not the case with GB. There are so many specifics. But if course a listener can make their own reading. However the listener cannot then say, refardoess of all evidence, my personal reading is correct, and expect to go unchallenged.

So, for example, the line is "countin white lines and getting stoned". I read above that because Bruce ha previously referred to hard drug use in a scalped version of Shut Out The Lights, it makes this a likely reading here. By a stronger extension, we could say that "white lines" is about him getting coked up, and the phrase @getting stoned", is a religious reference, to biblical stoning for transgressions within Stone Age society. Bruce has made much of biblical references over the years, so, that box is ticked. Class a drugs are illegal, so this is a transgression, so we all must accept that my reading, that this man is doing lines of sniff and then being punished by his peers, through the barbaric act of stoning, is correct.

I think it's pretty obvious that the white lines in GB are not cocaine. There are things in Bruce's lyrics I haven't caught or understood completely, due to English not being my mother language, but in this case - to me, at least- it was (and is) clear that the narrator is riding a motorcycle, counting the white lines in the road.

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It is known that negative environmental conditions increase vulnerability to drugs, whereas little is known on whether positive environmental conditions such as enriched environments (EE) have protective effects against addiction. We have previously found that EE consisting of bigger cages containing several toys that were changed once per week reduce cocaine-induced increases in locomotor activity. Here, we also show that the rewarding effects of cocaine are blunted in mice reared from weaning to adulthood in EE compared to mice reared in standard environments (SE). In addition, although both EE and SE mice develop behavioral sensitization to cocaine, EE mice show less activation in response to repeated administration of cocaine injections and reduced responses to cocaine challenges. In vivo microdialysis experiments demonstrate that the protective effects of EE do not depend on reduced cocaine-induced increases in the dopamine levels in the ventral or dorsal striatum. On the other hand, they were associated with reduced cocaine-induced expression of the immediate early gene zif-268 in the nucleus accumbens (shell and core) of EE mice. Finally, basal levels of Delta-Fos B, a transcription factor known to be increased by sustained activation of striatal neurons, are higher in the striatum of EE compared to SE mice and repeated administration of cocaine increases Delta-Fos B levels in SE mice but decreases them in EE mice. Altogether our results demonstrate that exposure to complex environments during early stages of life produce dramatic changes in the striatum that result in reduced reactivity to drugs of abuse.

Of the many people who experience psychoactive drugs, only a small percentage develops drug addiction. It is believed that environmental factors play a central role in determining sensitivity to the rewarding effects of drugs and vulnerability to develop addiction (Sinha, 2001; Goeders, 2002; Marinelli and Piazza, 2002; Kreek et al, 2005). For example, several studies have demonstrated that environmental stressors increase the unconditioned, conditioned, and reinforcing effects of drugs such as amphetamine, cocaine, and heroin (Sinha, 2001; Goeders, 2002; Marinelli and Piazza, 2002; Kreek et al, 2005). Preclinical studies have also provided important information on the mechanisms underlying this enhanced response to the effects of drugs and have shown that the dopamine system is implicated in this excessive reaction to drugs (Rouge-Pont et al, 1995; Goeders, 2002; Marinelli and Piazza, 2002).

The investigation of negative factors exacerbating addiction has been extensive, whereas considerably less attention has been dedicated to environmental manipulations that may mimic positive life experiences such as enrichment environments (EE) and may provide protection against drugs' effects. EE have been shown to increase learning and memory (van Praag et al, 2000), to facilitate recovery from brain injuries (Will et al, 2004), to reduce the insurgence of neurodegenerative diseases (Nithianantharajah and Hannan, 2006) and some authors have suggested that EE represent more natural and healthy environment than current standard housing conditions (Wurbel, 2001). In addition, some studies have shown that the reinforcing effects of amphetamine and nicotine are reduced in rats reared in EE compared to rats reared in social isolation (Bowling et al, 1993; Bardo et al, 2001; Green et al, 2002, 2003).

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