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I'm on my time with everyone
I have very bad posture
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
Distill the life that's inside of me
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
I'm anemic royalty
Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld
So I can sigh eternally
I'm so tired I can't sleep
I'm a liar and a thief
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
I'm anemic royalty
I'm on warm milk and laxatives
Cherry-flavored antacids
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
Distill the life that's inside of me
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
I'm anemic royalty
I have very bad posture
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
Distill the life that's inside of me
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
I'm anemic royalty
Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld
So I can sigh eternally
I'm so tired I can't sleep
I'm a liar and a thief
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
I'm anemic royalty
I'm on warm milk and laxatives
Cherry-flavored antacids
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
Distill the life that's inside of me
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
I'm anemic royalty
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The pain aches you feel, the lifelessness, and particularly the fact you can't sleep, no matter how tired you are.
You also get bad constipation, hence the laxatives and tea. It also makes you skinny by killing your appetite. Not to mention the depression which is compounded by all this.
I'm an ex opiate addict so the song makes a lot of sense to me.
The verses are him explaining the reasons he feels the need to do heroin,
The chorus is about doing heroin and how he feels on it.
"I'm on my time with everyone,
I have very bad posture."
This line representing two of his insecurities leading him to do heroin:
The first is about his problems with pressures of being a rock star. Everyone’s expecting great things out of him, done within a time limit. He’s expected to go to concerts and do an amazing job constantly. You’ve got to think where he’s coming from. He started out some 16/18 year old kid who thought being a rock star would be a release from all of his problems and he’d finally be happy, but really there’s even more pressure than there was before.
The second refers to problems he has with self-image.
I also think these first two verses are actually about why he started using heroin in the first place.
So, he picks up his needle…
“Sit and drink Pennyroyal tea”
This is a metaphor for him doing heroin.
“Distill the life that’s inside of me”
This is him saying how heroin makes him feel alive and rid of his troubles, also relieving his stomach problems.
“I’m anemic royalty”
He feels like he’s the ruler of his disease (stomach problems and depression) when he’s on heroin. I don’t know personally, but maybe long-term, heavy heroin use could cause anemia?
“Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld, so I can sigh eternally.”
Sadly, this line is about suicide. This line is about why he attempts to overdose on heroin. He’s an extremely depressed person, and he’s hoping that on the other side it’s a lot happier. If you don’t know, Leonard wrote very happy music, and I think this is what Kurt saw “the other side” as.
“I’m so tired, I can’t sleep.”
Saying he’s tired, but he can’t sleep because of heroin withdrawal.
“I’m a liar and a thief.”
He’s lying to everyone around him and continuing his heroin use because the pain when he’s off of it is unbearable. He’s a thief because he feels like he’s stealing money from Kris and Dave by forcing the record company to give him a bigger percentage of the royalties so he can keep up his expensive habit.
Now the next part is the big part of why I think this is about heroin. Also, this is why you have to listen to the music to know what this song is about. In the acoustic version of the song, he slows down considerably during the third verse, and sounds completely hopeless in his vocals. Then the song picks up into the chorus (which is about him doing and during heroin) on a happier, more hopeful sounding chord.
“I’m on warm milk and laxative, cherry flavored antacids.”
These are the things he has to take when he’s off of heroin to help with his stomach problems. However, they just don’t have the same effect and he feels they’re worthless. So he once again picks up his needle…
The second reason I got the idea that this song is about heroin is the outro in the original take on In Utero. I think the outro is about the way him coming down from heroin. It starts out loud, with a heavily distorted guitar, slows down the whole way, and eventually the distortion is turned off, which is also present in the whole song. The verses, while he’s off of it are clean, and the chorus, while he’s on it, has distortion. If you listen to it, it makes a lot of sense.
Sorry for the in-depth post, but I think this is possibly the smartest, deepest, and most emotional song Kurt wrote, besides maybe All Apologies. If you can’t tell, I’m pretty passionate about this song :P.
I figured the obvious stuff about heroin and his stomach pain, but never put together the musical tone change between the sad verses and the happier verse about pennyroyal tea reflecting the change in mood when he used. Great catch!
As for Anemic Royalty - I don't know about Heroin specifically, but I was prescribed Methadone for severe back pain. (Kurt also took that from a young age, which is shocking.. His pain must have been incredibly debilitating for him to be prescribed that, too. The doctor weighs a person's quality of life, only giving it if a patient's life would be a hell of constant pain without it, and when nothing else helps. Most don't know that it's used for pain management, because it's rarely prescribed for that.) Methadone depletes vitamins in your system, so you have to take vitamin supplements to keep healthy. I'd imagine that heroin is much, much worse for the body. There are times when the Methadone doesn't do enough for the pain. I can kind of see why he moved to harder stuff to ease it. But it must have been intense pain for him to take that step..
In an interview in the October 1993 issue of Impact, Cobain gave greater insight into the song, saying that it was about a person suffering from severe depression: "When I ask Cobain if 'Penny Royal Tea' is about indigestion, he half-laughs. 'Penny royal tea is a herbal abortive,' he says. 'I threw that in because I have so many friends who have tried to use that, and it never worked. The song is about a person who's beyond depressed; they're in their death bed, pretty much.' Cobain's own bout with serious stomach pain was well documented last year. 'Yeah, it did rub off on the song,' he admits. And I couldn't help noticing the 'Canadian' reference to a Leonard Cohen afterworld. 'That was my therapy, when I was depressed and sick. I'd read things like Malloy Dies [sic] by Beckett, or listen to Leonard Cohen, which would actually make it worse,' he laughs
pain sucks, but it is also just how some people are defined. it made him beautiful.
the reference to laxatives and cherry-flavored antacids is talking about his DXM addiction which started giving him really bad stomach pains which led to his heroin addiction.