This is about heroin addiction. Bono was inspired by a story he read about a man who smuggled heroin into Dublin to feed his habit despite the possibility of life imprisonment if he was caught. Bono was interested in how he got in that position. "Because for a lot of people, there are no physical doors open anymore," the singer told Hot Press in 1987. "And so if you can't change the world you're living in, seeing through different eyes is the only alternative. And heroin gives you heroin eyes to see the world with; and the thing about heroin is that you think that's the way it really is. That the old you, who worries about paying the rent, the old you who just worries, is not the real you."
The line about the "Seven Towers" refers to housing projects in Dublin where many drug users lived.
U2 has remained mostly drug-free, but they know many people who became addicts. A friend of theirs, Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy, died from heroin abuse in 1986.
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