Songfacts®:

• Like much of Dirt, Alice in Chains' (AIC) second studio album, "God Smack" is a cold look at heroin addiction.
  
  What in God's name have you done?
  Stick your arm for some real fun
  So your sickness weighs a ton
  
  That "stick your arm for some real fun" line is black humor and sarcasm. Layne Staley cowrote the song with Jerry Cantrell and based it on his own heroin addiction. He always avoided romanticizing drug use - even in the earlier stages of his heroin use, he never wanted to pimp the drug to the public.
  
  By the time Dirt rolled around, the early drug thrill was dying for Staley. He was an addict, though it's believed he'd started using less than a year earlier, during the band's tour with Van Halen and just before recording the Sap EP that preceded Dirt by seven months. Staley's use was creeping in during Sap, but only during Dirt did it start to become an issue. It negatively affected his ability to sing and show up on time. It also led to him having a little cubicle built in the recording studio that he decorated with candles, a painting of the Last Supper (Jesus' last meal before his crucifixion), and a dead puppy in a jar.
• AIC decided early in their formation to be raw and real with their songwriting. They felt that honest songs were best for performing with honest emotion. Staley remained committed to that philosophy, but he never sought to make heroin seem "cool."
  
  AIC made Dirt as a semi-conceptual album that tells the story of a guy who starts using drugs to ease the pain of life and ends up in the hell of addiction. This was a loose vision for the album, and only the second half contains the narrative. Still, "God Smack" should be understood as part of a broader narrative.
  
  Staley never fully recovered from his addiction, though he fought it nobly. The drug ruined his career, doomed him to years of isolation and physical degeneration, and killed him on April 5, 2002.
• Rumors have long persisted that the metal band Godsmack took their name from this song, but that's not true. The band has stated they were aware of the song but named themselves after an inside joke about a cold sore.
• Jerry Cantrell, guitarist, vocalist, and driving creative force behind AIC, calls this song and "Junkhead" (also on Dirt) the band's two "most openly honest" songs about drug addiction.
• And God's name is smack for some
  
  This is an odd line, but it seems to hark to Staley's childhood. His parents were Christian Scientists, and growing up in this tradition gave him a lifelong interest in the cult-like (and sometimes literally cultish) nature of some religious beliefs.