What is the song ';Hotel California'; By the Eagles talking about?

How do you interpret the song? I'm not sure. I think drug addiction or insanity? Am I right or wrong? Did something happen there or is it even a real place? Please tell me your interpretation.What is the song ';Hotel California'; By the Eagles talking about?
It's a modern take on a chapter of the ancient Greek epic, The Odyssey (by the poet Homer). Ulysses, on his return voyage from the Trojan wars back to Greece stops at a place that sucks the will to work, to explore, to fight, out of his men.





The Eagles' Hotel California is a metaphor for the land of the lotos eaters... a place you can enter, but never leave. A place where everything is easy, and where people just lie back in a stupor, whiling the rest of their lifetimes away, smoking pot, shooting up, drinking: a constant indulgence in hedonistic pleasure that will never end: ';Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll';... The Lotus plant, when eaten, induces a psychedelic stupor just like LSD.





By extension, I think it's fair to say that in this song, the Eagles are insinuating that the whole state of California is America's ';lotos land';.





A real-life example of this myth happened when the crew of the HMS Bounty mutinied against their Captain, the infamous Captain Bligh, to return to Tahiti and surrounding islands (particularly Pitcairn Island), hoping to live out their lives in a paradise of flowers, flowing streams and girls... forever renouncing their ';reality'; of 18th century England.





If you like the Eagles' song, I think you'd like Alfred Lord Tennyson's poetic rendition of the Greek myth too.





';Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,


In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclin鈥檇


On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.';What is the song ';Hotel California'; By the Eagles talking about?
I always thought it was about a cult, but drugs would be a good interpretation.
Think it has something to do with the excesses of American society, when others in the world are starving.





Hotel California isnt a real place, they are using it as a mechanism to represent California/America. Once you visit, you'll never want to leave.