 Kiedis wrote much of the song's lyrics during a period when he felt distraught and emotionally drained. He had maintained sobriety for roughly three years and felt that this had distanced him from his bandmates. While the group worked on Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Frusciante and Flea often smoked marijuana together, ignoring Kiedis, who felt that Frusciante was "no longer in [his] world." Driving home after rehearsal in April 1991, Kiedis thought of his heroin and cocaine addiction during his relationship with former girlfriend Ione Skye: "the loneliness that I was feeling triggered memories of my time with Ione and how I'd had this beautiful angel of a girl who was willing to give me all of her love, and instead of embracing that, I was downtown with fucking gangsters shooting speedballs under a bridge."
