I think you people are missing the timeline of the lyrics, and the point of this song. You assume that drugs mentioned are immediately bad and are the smoking gun here but if you just take an extra 2 minutes to look at things as they are presented you find that it isn’t the case in the least. News flash, drinking is something adults can do responsibly. And drugs? Hootie is far from a straight edge man, I don’t think a little recreational use is going to be a deal breaker for him. I believe It’s about his never ending obsession with this woman he loves, and she doesn’t feel the same way, at least not yet. Explained in detail below.
Think of the timeline of the song as watching a movie on rewind. It starts with the present and goes back a little bit in the second verse, and further yet in the third.
For continuity I’m going to jump to the third verse just to keep the timeline straight. “Last night” he says he tried to leave her. It didn’t take long before he realized she really is the girl of his dreams. She goes out back to relax a little with a totally unimportant drug and he gets some alone time to contemplate how crazy he was thinking. He breaks down confused and remorseful.
The second verse he goes back to “this morning”. It could actually be the morning of that day, or just a morning in the blur of days that pass by while he battles with himself. At any rate we can assume it’s in the recent past. He wakes up after feeling more attached to her than ever from his actions the “night before” just to find a simple note sitting by the phone telling him it’s over. In addition it says there’s a chance he could have her again. She comes walking back in the door and he realizes the gravity of the situation. Now he is in some crazy in between situation with a woman that he finally just realized he truly loved. He can’t bring himself to just walk away from her so he decides to take his chances with “maybe” He sits down and does what any logical man would do, drink it all away.
He starts in the present time with the first verse. Looking at her from afar and seeing how things have changed between them now that they are separated, but he still cant pull away. She doesn’t open up to him the same way she used to, and he misses that. He is caught in the infamous friend-zone, and takes that attachment because it beats being alone. His only saving grace is sometimes she has a few too many and spills it all. He can’t deny his attachment, he just wants to disappear.
The chorus is repeated so many times because it symbolizes what he tells himself every day but can’t bring himself to actually do. He knows it’s best for him to just let her be, but at the same time, tomorrow sounds like a great day to start, until tomorrow is upon him, so maybe the day after, and then the day after. Endlessly procrastinating what he knows he has to do because deep down he knows he can’t actually bring himself to follow through.
