During the phase of writing Degradation trip and recording the demos, Cantrell placed himself in a state of isolation in a house in the Cascade Mountains in North America. The album deals with a lot of issues that Cantrell stated weren't easy to get across verbally. He stated in his biography (in a passage taken from the Roadrunner Records website) "In '98, I locked myself in my house, went out of my mind, and wrote 25 songs. I rarely bathed during that period of writing; I sent out for food; I didn't really venture out of my house in three or four months. It was a hell of an experience. The album is an overview of birth to now. . . Boggy Depot is like kindergarten compared to this."
As a result of Cantrell's writing process he originally had 25 songs to go on the album. Roadrunner records, who released the album in June 2002, had the number of songs reduced to 14 to go on the album but in later 2002 released all 25 songs under the title Degradation Trip Volumes 1 & 2.
Here is the fantastic track Gone, from volume 1 of Degradation Trip
