Cold Turkey Trivia Quiz

Answer: A setting sun

'The Needle and the Damage Done' was written about Danny Whitten, a guitarist with Crazy Horse, who was a heroin addict and died of an overdose in 1972. Several musicians have covered it, including Duran Duran, The Pretenders (quite fittingly, as two members died of heroin overdoses), and Laura Marling. Crazy Horse also lost a roadie, Bruce Berry, to heroin; Young wrote 'Tonight's the Night' about him.

Answer: Under the Bridge

When All Saints covered this song in 1998, perhaps unsurprisingly, they missed out the lines about heroin addiction. Hillel Slovak, a founding member of the band, died of a heroin overdose in 1988. 'My Lovely Man', another track on 'Blood Sugar Sex Magik', was dedicated to him.

Answer: Real Thing

The demo version of 'Real Thing' is called 'Heroin' or 'Real Thing (Heroin)'. The line 'under the hill with just a few notches on my belt' can be interpreted as an allusion to injecting heroin (i.e. the addict getting a vein up in their arm by tightening a belt around it).

Other Alice In Chains songs about heroin include 'Junkhead' and 'G-d Smack'. Frontman Layne Staley died in 2002 after injecting a 'speedball', the heroin and cocaine cocktail that also killed John Belushi.

Answer: Passé

According to frontman Courtney Taylor, the song is about an ex-girlfriend who was a heroin addict. The documentary film 'Dig!' revealed that the song was also dedicated to the Dandy Warhols' rivals, The Brian Jonestown Massacre. The Brian Jonestown Massacre responded with 'Not If You Were The Last Dandy On Earth'.

Answer: Venus in Furs

'Venus In Furs' may not have been a heroin anthem, but it was still pretty shocking in itself for the time it was released, being about sado-masochism (it was inspired by the Leopold von Sacher-Masoch book of the same name). As for the content of the other songs 'Heroin' is self-explanatory.

The 'man' in 'I'm Waiting For The Man' is a drug dealer, and one of the characters in 'Run Run Run' is a heroin addict called Marguerita Passion. Both Lou Reed and Nico were addicted to heroin during their time with the Velvet Underground.

Answer: Hurt

Cash covered 'Hurt' in 2005. It is reportedly Trent Reznor's favourite NIN song and one of the most personal songs he had ever written. As well as heroin addiction, the song has also been interpreted as being about self-injury and depression. Reznor himself overdosed on heroin in 2000 and went into rehab the following year.

Answer: Beetlebum

To be more exact, it was written about Albarn's then-girlfriend Justine Frischmann's heroin addiction. 'Beetle' in the title is a reference to 'chasing the beetle', another term for 'chasing the dragon', i.e. inhaling the vapour of the drug. The line 'just get numb' is also a possible allusion to heroin usage.

Answer: Guns 'n' Roses

'Mr Brownstone' is from G'n'R's number one album 'Appetite for Destruction'. According to Slash, it was written about his and Izzy Stradlin's heroin addictions. The name 'Mr Brownstone' is an allusion to 'brown', one of the many nicknames for heroin.

According to the Songfacts website, Slash, Stradlin and Steven Adler decided to get clean after Axl Rose said at a 1989 gig that he was 'tired of too many people in this organisation dancing with Mr. goddam Brownstone'.

Answer: King Heroin

'King Heroin', from Brown's album 'There It Is', was written by Manny Rosen, whose daughter died of a heroin overdose. The lyrics are an example of personification; the drug is the protagonist of the song and describes how it ruins the lives of various people from all walks of life. It is also likened to a white horse that carries addicts down to Hell.

Answer: Dry mouth

According to the song of the same name, symptoms of cold turkey include fever ('Temperature's rising, fever is high'), aching all over ('my body is aching, goose pimple bone') and insomnia ('my eyes are wide open, can't get to sleep'). The phrase comes from the goosepimples on the recovering addict's skin caused by cold sweats.

Lennon himself was a heroin addict. 'Happiness is a Warm Gun' was said to be about his habit, with lines such as 'I need a fix 'cause I'm going down'.