Songfacts®:

• Art of Anarchy singer Scott Stapp had already been sober for several years when he wrote this song after years of alcohol and drugs issues. This song is about the constant battles he faces with his demons. Stapp explained to Revolver magazine:
  
  "That is basically just me talking about and characterizing as afterburn. Those memories and things in your past that you can't change but still haunt you. It's a song, really, talking about the battles that you have in your mind even though you may be on the right path now, you still look back and you see things in your life that you wish you could have done differently had you been where you are now. And how those things can haunt you and forever.
  
  I call that living in the afterburn because those things are just firmly imprinted and burned into my mind, man. That's something that I have to live with. I think there's a little bit — one of the themes in this record is that reflecting on things that I regret but there's also a theme of moving forward and a new beginning and a new life. But all of it came out of going through the madness."