Mistress by Disturbed

Album: Believe (2002)

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Songfacts®:

The mistress could be a metaphor for drugs. For drug users, the substance is a lover/mistress because their lives revolve around it. First, there is the "honeymoon," where the user finds comfort in it. Soon enough, the consequences of drug abuse show up. It is "a nightmare from which (he) cannot awaken." The mistress has become an enemy, it "takes away everything": job, money, home, health ("weakened as I am"), relationship, friends, etc. Even if the user contemplates quitting, he lives for their next dose ("just give me another moment from which I will never awaken"), and for those who manage to quit, relapse is common, sometimes replacing a drug for another, such as injecting cocaine instead of heroin ("falling again for another mistress of burden to idolize"). >>
Suggestion credit:
Sophie - Montreal, Canada
Disturbed frontman David Draiman married Lena Yada, a former WWE Diva, in 2011, but he was a bit more cynical about love when he wrote this tune a decade earlier. He said it "describes the new tragedy of our lives, that even if we find love, the life we have chosen does not seem to want to let us keep it."
This appears on Disturbed's second studio album, Believe, which debuted at #1 in the US.

Comments: 3

Karila from Woodland Hills, CaI don't believe that these lyrics can be interpreted in such a strict limit as to drugs (unless the band has stated that the song is really about drugs). The whole theme of the album deals with the struggles that one finds when following a faith, no matter what it is or what rules are about it. I am just finding it hard to believe that the song thus far have gone from such a general standpoint and then suddenly, this song is about drugs. I believe that the mistress can refer to any kind of internal sorrow that the person is experiencing, whether it be from drugs or internal conflicts. Unless you can cite the shource of which the "drugs" is clearly the mistress. Otherwise, I think that is a very shallow stereotype of Disturbed's music. In an interview w/ the German television show Mulatschag, Dan Donegan stated that the whole purpose of the album Believe is to find strength in unity despite beliefs, in a sense uniting everybody through depictions of their struggles in this life.
Kevin from Duluth, GaI think that David has had many girlfriends, or even women that he couldn't have, and has broken his heart, and he cannot awaken from the nightmare. But he continues to fall for another, and will never awaken.
Dylon from Grant, Miit remindes me of the Mistresses from Legend of the Seeker

forcing love through pain.

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