They could prescribe you any illness you'd like if you define the terms of your ailments
You could sing a pretty malady like a black canary
But a crow don't know the smell of carbon monoxide
How many years have you been on that couch?
They could've quilt'd you in the throes by now
You draw a line in the sand where it ends and you begin
But the tide rolls in, so who knows? Oh, well

And a little identity never hurt nobody, but lately you've been focusing too much on yourself
So how many milligrams of you are still left in there? Whoa
'Cause back in my day we didn't need no feel-good pills and no psychiatrists
No, we just drank ourselves to death
God-damn it, we liked it

Who makes the call?
What's a symptom, what's a flaw, can it be both?
Well, I suppose that's an answer
Would you give up your humanity for just a touch of sanity?
'Cause God knows it's not like it's cancer
And good news to the purists, they've discovered a cure for the symptoms of being alive
It's a painless procedure with a low rate of failure
But very few patients survive

And a little conformity never hurt nobody, but lately I've been worried that you're losing yourself
So how many milligrams of you are still left in there? Whoa
'Cause back in my day we didn't need no feel-good pills and no psychiatrists
No, we just bled out in our baths
God-damn it, we liked it

Doctor, what's my prognosis if the studies show that
Disease is in the eye of the beholder?
Tell me "So it goes"
We depress to impress, I guess, in layer after layer to get off our chests
It's cold out now, we can take it off later
Better safe than sorry, and we both know the danger

So doctor, could you run another test?
Got a feeling that this time I might just pass it
Well, if you raise the average
We'll all sing when the bell curve rings in lyrics symptomatic of the way we think
And our harmonies don't sync, we can change our voices
A chorus on condition of our diagnosis

Back in my day we didn't need no feel-good pills and no psychiatrists
What can I say, except don't heed no evil wills of moral nihilists
I said, "Back in the days of lobotomies and shock therapy and mad scientists
Oh, don't you make me waste my breath
God-damn it"

Ain't your you-dentity at stake?
Does aspirin kill you with the pain?
You're not your thoughts, you're not your brain, you're just the character you've made
Up in your head, down in your heart, what seem like separate body parts
Come together to believe they're you, and not just chemistry
It's not the way that you were raised, or what the advertisements say

Not what you pay for, what you pray for, what you want, or what you say
And I see your tendency to redefine disease by what you need
And I'm afraid I can't prescribe the diagnosis that you seek
And something tells me that you need, forgive me now if I misspeak
But something tells me that you like, and something tells me
You prefer to be sitting there flipping through those old issues of people

Well, that's our time, see you next week