Jack Antonoff is getting candid about turning drugs to cope with the death of his sister more than 20 years ago — and the terrible trip that made him swear off drugs forever.
The 39-year-old Grammy-winning producer, who has long collaborated with Taylor Swift, spoke to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in a new interview this week.
“We were touring a lot and I was obviously just so f–ked up emotionally that I took a whole bunch of mushrooms one night with some friends and I completely freaked out,” said the Bleachers frontman, who was 18 when his 13-year-old sister, Rachel, succumbed to brain cancer.
The New Jersey native admitted he “completely lost [his] mind” during the trip, which took place while he was touring with his band Steel Train.
He ascribed his reaction to the drugs as a combination of the amount he took and the grief he was dealing with at the time.
“I was so f–ked up from that experience that to this day I feel allergic [to drugs],” he said, adding that he never wants to feel “out of control again.”
But he’s ultimately grateful for that “stupid mistake,” he shared.
“A lot of my friends struggled, I know a lot of people who have struggled and continue to struggle,” he said. “I got lucky that my rock bottom was more one that was mixing psychedelics and grief and not needles and fast cars and whatnot.”
Antonoff also noted that the oversaturation of “words like grief and trauma and depression” can be “isolating” for those in times of real crisis.
“Because there’s depression, and then there’s not leaving the house,” he said, adding that one of the most “formative experiences” of his life was when everyone else eventually moved on after his sister’s death.
“Life really carried on and I was still there in grief town,” he continued. “And life does carry on, which is beautiful, [but] you really gotta f–king drag yourself into reality. And it’s not only the hardest work in the world, it’s also so sad, because to reenter reality is to also leave some stuff in the past.”
