What does Down with the Sickness mean?

Disturbed: Down with the Sickness Meaning

Album cover for Down with the Sickness album cover

Song Released: 2000


Get "Down with the Sickness" on MP3: Get MP3 from iTunes

Down with the Sickness Lyrics

Can you feel that?
Ah shit

Drowning deep in my sea of loathing
Broken your servant I kneel
(Will you give in to me?)
It seems what's left of my human side
Is slowly changing in me
(Will you give in to me?)

Looking at my own...

  1. 1TOP RATED

    #1 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Oct 5th 2006 !⃝

    Ok this is jst weird so lets jst go with the straight up quote frm david draiman himself aye?

    'speaks about the eternal struggle of the individual against the mother culture of society that is constantly trying to beat the child struggling for independence and individuality into submission.'

    like someone has said before, its a metaphor
    i don't know about all of you, but I trust draimans interpretation most

  2. 2TOP RATED

    #2 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Feb 7th 2006 !⃝

    This song is completely a metaphor. It is about how "mother society" beats its "children" into submission. It is a straight out attack on comformity ("the Sickness").

  3. 3TOP RATED

    #3 top rated interpretation:
    Vivi_
    click a star to vote
    Feb 8th 2006 !⃝

    The song starts off as a child that has been beaten so low to the point he's kneeling sumissively before his abuser which happens to be his mother who also probably treats him like a servant. At his lowest point he starts to change from being fearful and heartbroken and an intense hatred starts to flare up inside of him, each time he's being abused, but it's only his thoughts and his feelings that have turned him angry and full of rage which is lashed so violently out in this song but he's basically saying because of her cruelty he's turned into this monster and now he's just as sick as her when he says, "Come get down with the sickness."

  4. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Sep 18th 2020 !⃝

    Someone once asked me "can u feel that" a wave of erotic sexual intensity shot thru me. It was online. I do t know who it was annonymous.
    Well it got really heavy in my chest soon after and my mother hurt me pretty bad. The sexual intensity still feel it the heaviness is unbearable sometimes and the thoughts recieved through this " connection has poisoned nearly every area of my life. Nobody knows and im crazy for having such stories. Peace out literally

  5. anonymous
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    Apr 29th 2020 !⃝

    Years ago I saw an interview with David the lead singer and read about what this song is about. David was very rebellious as a child. His mother has a severe mental illness, an alcoholic and a dug drug addict. She verbally, mentally and physically abused him to the point of breaking him. It was extreme abuse. He did say he did eventually forgive her. I cant find the I interview now. There was so much controversy over the song that when David was asked about it he would say it was about all mothers trying to control their children etc.. This song is about his mother and how she was severely sick mentally and severely abused him in every way.

  6. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Dec 21st 2019 !⃝

    This song is about David's mother abusing him. David was a problem child growing up,in and out of Borden schools. His mother could not control him, so she dissaplined him with physical abuse. I think they cover it up by saying it is about abuse in general, but David was reprimanded with abuse. Check the background of a lot of rock and metal musicians and you might come across a difficult childhood, but I'm 99.9% positive that David was wild and was reprimanded with abuse.

  7. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    May 6th 2019 !⃝

    Hi , I was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago. I listen t the lyrics Get Down With The Sickness with a different meaning. It’s my fight song to beating my cancer. Thank You to this Band LAW Draper Ut

  8. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Dec 10th 2018 !⃝

    regardless of the true meaning of the song, this song reminds me of my childhood. Being a slave to a step mother and finally breaking free from her abuse. I was mentally abused as a child by my step mother, she even attempted to sexually abuse me at one point until my dad found out what was going on and took my brother and I and left.

    I tried for years to tell him what was going on but he never believed me until he seen it with his own eyes one day, he just happened to come home early that day.

    I recall feeling exactly like the way the song describes the boy feels at the end. to this day my now ex step mother fears me, she said I threatened to shoot her which I never did but hey if that's what made you stop and fear me I'll go with it :)

  9. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    May 3rd 2017 !⃝

    I believe it's being in a place of decision. A crossroad. Being in this mental state either from drugs or abuse you decide to get down with the sickness which is surrendering your soul and mind to evil (satan). Oh shit do u feel that refers to the physical eroticism from doing this. It feels fucking good. But like all the rest its only temporary. The beginning of the song there is a convo between 2 persons or beings. You can fill in the rest..... been here before. Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the light

  10. anonymous
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    Oct 21st 2016 !⃝

    I feel like this interpretation is that its a love/hate relationship that they both have and the mother abuses the child. The child had enough and he wants to stop and end it all. Its not about society people. If you hear the words more clearly the meaning is loud and clear. Don't assume things and get your crap straight.

  11. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Jul 8th 2015 !⃝

    Sounds like a bipolar paranoid schizophrenic, woke up one night and recalled his twisted hatred for his mother. Finally freeing herself from 'taking care of him' for near 40 years of life, the son woke one night in a cold dark angry place. There he lay, letting the feelings of abandon over take his brain. He thinks about his life and how he never did anything with it, how he has hurt and disappointed all around him and cant support his own family. Thoughts of suicide fill his head. The world would be better off without him!
    Suddenly he thinks about who gave him the life he so utterly despises and takes for granted. Then he does what he does best.
    He twists and bends the plot lines of the past into his own sob story. He looks in the mirror and tells him self that 'its not you who should die.'
    All is decided. Shuffling through piles of things in the dark. He knows its there, but he has to be quiet.
    Walks into her room.
    Blade strikes and her eyes open.
    "I did this to you bitch"
    He cant go back now, so he swings, and swings, and swings.

    Anyways, that's what the song means to me.

  12. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Jan 2nd 2015 !⃝

    Definitely about being abused by your primary caretaker, mother. I relate as being beaten, starved and neglected as a child. I was the 2nd of 4 children. The song is relatable due to the question of why? Why me? Asking God why? Knowing all the whole who?

  13. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Oct 11th 2014 !⃝

    Okay so I'm bipolar and I can really relate to the line "you've woken up the demon in me." It describes my angry, foul-tempered mood. Whenever I feel my other side coming on I just jam to this song and it really helps.

  14. anonymous
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    Sep 15th 2014 !⃝

    Though I know this isn't the true meaning, this reminds me of Dave Pelzers book "A Child Called "It"" Dave was severely abused as a child and was treated like a slave. He describes it as feeling like his mothers prisoner. If you've ever read the book, you could probably see a lot of the lyrics fitting with this song. If you haven't read it, you should give it a read. It's pretty good.

  15. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Jun 8th 2013 !⃝

    I heard David say the sickness is love. You catch it from others. He says let out your hate. Then he says give it to me. It is not hate it is love.

  16. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Nov 23rd 2012 !⃝

    I think its about puberty lol or demon possession

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  17. anonymous
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    Apr 18th 2012 !⃝

    To the noob who said its islam trying to take over the world, the voice that says "ladies and gentlemen, boys ans girls, dying times here" is a sample from mad max 3. So there.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  18. anonymous
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    Mar 30th 2012 !⃝

    It cant just be interpreted as just society. This also can relate to individuals who have had enough growing up as a child or merely as an adult as well. Mother can also refer to the cruelty of nature..not in terms of the wild but the nature of life itself. Its sometimes cruel to individual as well as society and eventually the ones at the bottom have lost all patience and kindness and beat down the whip. This can be literal as well as metaphor from an actual mother beating her child to the higher power beating the rest down.

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