Some songs arrive fully dressed, polished to a comfortable distance from the pain they describe. “Addicted,” the second single from Christian rock project ONEWAY, does no such thing. It walks straight into the fire and stays there, giving voice to someone who is not reflecting on addiction from the safety of sobriety, but battling it right now, in the moment, with shaking hands and a fractured sense of self. The result is one of the most emotionally unflinching rock singles to arrive this year.
Led by vocalist and creative force Dustin Burkhard, ONEWAY has built its foundation on the kind of honesty that most artists shy away from. Depression, anxiety, mental health struggles — these are not topics that make for comfortable press releases, but for Burkhard, they are the entire point. With “Addicted,” the project doubles down on that commitment, planting the listener squarely inside the interior world of someone caught in a cycle they desperately want to escape but feel powerless to break.
The song opens with a devastating admission: “This thorn in my flesh / Tears at me each day / It’s taking my life away.” The biblical echo in that phrase — drawn from Paul’s own confession of weakness — is not accidental. From the very first lines, Burkhard frames addiction not as a moral failing to be condemned, but as a wound that lives inside a person, persistent and exhausting. There is no posturing here, no tough exterior. Just the raw admission of someone who has tried to put the monster in the ground and watched it claw its way back.
What makes “Addicted” particularly striking is the way it refuses to look away from shame. One of the most quietly devastating verses in the song captures the unbearable weight of hiding: “I hide it the best I can / Won’t let them see who I really am / But inside I’m just a broken man.” The fear of being truly seen — and subsequently abandoned — is something anyone who has struggled in silence will recognize immediately. Burkhard writes about concealment not as cowardice, but as a survival mechanism born out of very real terror. The question that follows, “Will they stay or will they leave,” lands like a gut punch precisely because it asks something millions of people have been too afraid to answer.
Musically, the track is built to carry that emotional weight. Strong guitar work forms the spine of the production, delivering the kind of visceral, forward-driving energy that defines modern rock at its most compelling. Vibrant riffs and a big melodic chorus create the sonic equivalent of the internal struggle the lyrics describe — loud enough to feel overwhelming, melodic enough to let you breathe. Piano arrangements and cinematic strings weave through the mix, adding layers of emotional depth that elevate the track well beyond a standard hard rock release. Burkhard’s vocals shift between registers throughout — deep and grounded in the verses, bright and almost desperate in the chorus — mirroring the exhaustion and craving that the lyrics articulate so precisely.
The song’s structure is itself a kind of emotional architecture. The repeating chorus of “I’m addicted / I’m barely holding on” functions not just as a hook but as a kind of mantra of endurance, the way a person might repeat the same thought in the middle of a dark night simply to keep themselves present. Then, at the critical turning point, something shifts. The bridge collapses the narrator’s defenses entirely: “I can’t hold on / If I don’t let go.” It is a moment of profound spiritual surrender, and it pivots the song toward its most emotionally complex resolution.
Rather than offering a tidy conversion or a triumphant chorus of recovery, “Addicted” lands somewhere far more honest. The narrator is still addicted. The struggle has not vanished. But the final iteration of the chorus rewrites the central admission: “I’m addicted / But He’s my strength when I’m not strong.” The grammar itself tells the story. The addiction is real and ongoing; the hope is not a destination reached but a hand extended, accepted in desperation. It is one of the more nuanced expressions of faith-within-struggle that contemporary Christian rock has produced in some time, and it elevates “Addicted” from a compelling song about hardship into something genuinely resonant.
For listeners who have grown tired of music that sanitizes pain into something easier to market, ONEWAY represents a meaningful alternative. Burkhard is clearly building something with purpose and consistency — a body of work that extends a hand to people in the places that polished pop and comfortable worship music rarely reaches. “Addicted” speaks directly to the person who already knows what it costs to fight every day, and it does so without flinching, without moralizing, and without looking away.
If your playlist has room for songs that feel as real and unrelenting as the struggles they describe, this is one that deserves your full attention. “Addicted” by ONEWAY is available now. Follow the project on social media and stay close — this is a story still being told.