Songfacts®:

• Cold returned in 2019 with The Things We Can't Stop, their first album since 2011. Frontman Scooter Ward had long since kicked his drug habit, but the memories of addiction still lingered. In "Without You," the second single from the album, he confronts his compulsions. "The bones of the lyrics is, whether it be an addiction, religion or love - whatever you're gravitating towards - going all-in with it and just letting it take you over," he explained in a Songfacts interview. "But at the same time there's a little part of you that has that doubt, that little line that breaks, and you're like, Oh, now I see it for what it is. It's a revelation in whatever addiction you're having at the moment."
• A key line in this song is, "You came to kill the things I loved." As Ward explains: "With addiction, the addiction itself kills everything that you love."
  
  It's a sentiment that comes from a guy who lived it, and it hit home for many Cold listeners. "I've already had people from addiction things message me online and say they're going to rehab now and starting to box and trying to get off pills and stuff like that just because of this song," he told told Songfacts. "They were like, 'Dude, I connected with you on that. I knew you used to be an addict and I feel you.'"
• Scooter Ward explained that while the song is "about doubting blind faith," its accompanying video has a "horror movie/cult type storyline about a lost soul finding hope in the darkness."