Blood for Poppies

This is the lead single by alternative rock group Garbage from their fifth studio album, Not Your Kind of People. "The song is meant to feel sort of like an abstract dream," said frontwoman Shirley Manson. "The inspiration came from a story I had read in Los Angeles Times about the opium trade and also from watching the documentary Restrepo. It's not literal in any sense whatsoever but it's a song about disorientation and delusion and the human struggle to stay sane in the face of insanity." The single was made available on March 20, 2012.

Fashion photographer and filmmaker Matt Irwin shot the music video in Malibu and Los Angeles.

Here's some history: It was the Assyrians who discovered the calming and sedative properties of the opium poppy, which they cultivated. They used it medicinally to relieve pain, induce sleep, and bring on feelings of serenity and well being for psychologically damaged patients. The ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, Indian, Minoan, Greek, Roman, Persian and Arab Empires all made widespread use of opium, which was the most potent form of pain relief then available. By the seventeenth century, opium was being mixed with tobacco for smoking, and its addictive properties were being recognized. At the turn of the 19th century, opium was deemed in Western countries to be the most effective painkiller. It was usually dispensed as a dark brown alcoholic solution, but unfortunately its use had become particularly addictive. Widespread medical use of unprocessed opium continued until late in the century when it gave way to morphine, which could be injected at a precisely controlled dosage. Opium was prohibited in many countries during the early twentieth century, leading to the modern pattern of opium production as a precursor for illegal recreational drugs such as heroin and cocaine. The 2010 documentary film Restrepo chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley who are battling in a country whose biggest money earner is the illicit trade of opium.