Rock and roll has always had a complicated, and often disastrous, relationship with drugs. Rather than the typical romanticizing portrayal of said relationship—or far worse, the demonizing sermon—the new single from Squintin’ Tarantino offers a far more complex perspective on a chemical dependency gone wrong.
“Sandtrails” isn’t the average glorification of psychedelics, nor an enthusiastic lauding of cocaine, a boast of a chronic pot habit, or even an ode to heroin. It’s a tale of prescription pharmaceuticals, casually prescribed by a well-intentioned doctor, Hippocratic Oath in hand, perhaps without fully considering the consequences.
This song, and this problem, isn’t a new one for Ryan Mazerolle of Squintin’ Tarantino. He was first prescribed anxiety medication at the age of sixteen. From there, the dosage and the side-effects both quickly escalated and “Sandtrails” followed not long after.
“During that time, I had gone through quite a few prescriptions within a year and a half-ish,” says Mazerolle. From 0.5mg of citalopram as a starter to going through three or four other prescriptions as well. It went from 0.5mg to taking two plastic pills of 75 mg each daily.
“I don’t remember the names of the rest of the prescriptions, unfortunately. What I do remember isn’t much at all during that time, to be honest.”
Mazerolle said he was never interested in taking anything more than the doctors had prescribed—and today still maintains a disinterest in pharmaceuticals—but he was prepared to take the doctor’s advice at the time, until the side-effects become too uncomfortable.
“Life felt strange up until making that decision,” says Mazerolle. “I remember living but yet life felt like a distant memory. Kind of like trying to remember your earliest memory—just a clouded brain basically. I guess I operated nominally, I did what was needed out of me but, at some point, it no longer felt like I was living strangely enough.
“I barely told anyone how it actually affected me during the time. Some friends knew I was taking the medication, they never knew how it was affecting me though.”
After about a year of the prescription, in his final grade of high school, Mazerolle independently decided to go cold turkey.
“I was adamant about breaking out of the weird funk I was in,” explains Mazerolle. “I remember waking up the next day feeling weird. Something was off, I thought I was tired. By the time I had gotten to school, I remember lights feeling sensitive to my eyes, a slight shakiness in my vision, shakes, some strange chills, noises being more annoying than they normally are. Just discomfort in general.”
A visit to the doctor quickly arrived at the inevitable question: how long had it been since Mazerolle had last taken his medication. Apparently, the decision to stop taking the prescription entirely was a bad one, and if he wanted to come off of them without withdrawal effects, Mazerolle would have to wean himself gradually.
“In other words, he was telling me I was addicted to something I had never overindulged in,” says Mazerolle. “It took like five to six months of bringing down the volume of medication. I had begun my ‘withdrawal’ thing on the last week of my 12th grade.”
Mazerolle began what he describe as “Ferris Bueller’s two-and-a-half to 3-week withdrawals” where he missed school and skipped both prom and graduation, trading it all in for a dark bedroom and something akin to vertigo.
And then came the song.
But not all at once. It took time to get “Sandtrails” there, and roughly two years of working in the studio with Mike Oz to work it into a form Mazerolle was happy with; a far more ambitious project than anyone would assume. A song about a conflicted chemical dependency was only the first part, pushing hard on the limits of folk-rock was another matter.
“I didn’t want to release a folk song. I wanted to release my interpretation of where folk music should have gone, instead of it being on life support by artists who choose to not push any boundaries with the genre for some reason,” says Mazerolle. “I think I came out with something that brings new life to a song that stayed relevant to my life the last decade.”
Still, that song came with a terrible cost. Mazerolle says that, post-medication, he still doesn’t feel like the person he once was, and furthermore, find that’s people who haven’t experienced that for themselves—friends and family included—are unable to fully relate.
“If there is anything a textbook psychology book would say, I guess it would tell me to be happy that I came out of it alive,” says Mazerolle. “Maybe I lived through a recipe that creates a huge pool of depression that some people might not come out of.”
Mazerolle still isn’t entirely convinced that the cure was any better than the cause. He may have the song, but he feels there’s a long way yet to get before he’ll be sure it was worth it.