Some songs fight. Some songs grieve. Some songs laugh at the absurdity of it all. Waiting for the Drugs to Kick In somehow does all three at once.

Stephen Jaymes doesn’t sugarcoat reality, but he also refuses to drown in it. His latest single is a meditation on exhaustion. The kind of exhaustion that settles in after too many pointless arguments, too many battles that end in stalemates, too many cycles of outrage that leave everyone exactly where they started. The title is tongue-in-cheek, but the sentiment is real. How do you keep going when everything feels like it’s stuck on repeat?

Jaymes doesn’t offer easy answers, but he does provide a soundtrack for that moment when you throw your hands up, take a deep breath, and decide what happens next.

Musically, Waiting for the Drugs to Kick is like a blurry conversation. The one where everyone is too tired to argue, but too wired to go home. There’s a warm looseness in the arrangement, bottles tipping over in the background and a steady, rolling rhythm that keeps things grounded. The song sits in the moment, allowing the weight of it to settle before nudging you forwards.

The vocals are perfectly balanced between weariness and resolve Jaymes sounds like someone wh ohas been through this before, and knows he will go through it again – but also, like someone who has figured out that despair is a trap, and healing is an act of rebellion.

Lyrically, Jaymes plays with double meanings, flipping between the personal and the political.

The “drugs” in the title? They’re whatever gets you through. Music, books, meditation, laughter, love – anything that breaks the spell of helplessness. but there’s a dark humor here. Jaymes suggests something radical: that maybe the way forward isn’t to fight harder, just smarter.

The song also hints at something bigger – VISION2025, the project Jaymes has been building with each release, a counter-narrative to the doom loop we’ve been trapped in.

Waiting for the Drugs to Kick In is one of those tracks that lets the dust settle just long enough for you to see the bigger picture. And that might be what makes it hit the hardest.

Stephen Jaymes is right, that we don’t have to keep playing the game. We can change the rules. We can opt out even. We can heal before we fight. We can wake up.

Stay up to date with Stephen Jaymes on his Website and connect on Instagram.