Friday 17 January 2014

10 Former Stoner Musicians Who Quit Smoking Pot



Kid Cudi

The Kanye West protege and self-proclaimed “lonely stoner” rapped about smoking weed in several of the tracks on his 2009 and 2010 Man on the Moon albums. But in April 2011, Kid Cudi wrote a confessional post on his Tumblr page and announced he had quit smoking, expressing frustration about his constant association with drug and stoner culture. “I’m 27 with a business to run and I need to be alert and focused with my mind strong,” he wrote. “I know most of you wanna see me all drugged out and fucked up and I know misery loves company...[but] I always made music for me to help myself find understanding. I have finally learned from the words in my songs."




Mark Foster

The frontman of Foster the People credited the most unlikely person in music with helping him to quit marijuana for good. Foster had quit smoking pot three days prior to meeting Snoop Dogg at a festival, and said in a July 2012 interview with Q magazine that the rapper discouraged him from sharing a blunt together. "I told Snoop, 'I quit smoking but I'd have one with you now if I had the chance.' [He said] ‘Y'know what, brother: sometimes you gotta slow down and focus on your sh*t,’” said Foster. "From the godfather of marijuana smoking! That was good enough for me."



Travis Barker

The highly tatted drummer for Blink 182 quit smoking pot in the spring of 2012 after being diagnosed with six ulcers and Barrett’s esophagus due to his habitual pot smoking and unhealthy lifestyle, which resulted in his esophagus lining become pre-cancerous. After undergoing an emergency tonsillectomy, he completely altered his way of living. “I used to love smoking weed… I would smoke weed at night if I had anxiety. I always thought I’d be able to do that for the rest of my life, but when your health is on the line, you don’t [mess] around,” he said. “I love being a dad and I love playing music. I’m not trying to give up any of that.”



Cee Lo Green

All it took was one bad trip for the six-time Grammy award winner and current judge of The Voice to give up his weed habit.  Green revealed in November 2010 that he had suffered a weed-induced anxiety attack back in the late ‘90s with his former band Goodie Mob and “never got comfortable with [marijuana] again.” However, he was allegedly caught smoking weed while on The Voice last month; NBC removed the footage of him blowing smoke out of his nose from all re-runs of the episode.



George Michael

Michael has numerous weed arrests to his name including a possession charge in 2008 and an August 2010 conviction of driving under the influence of cannabis, which resulted in a four-week jail sentence. He underwent substance abuse counseling afterwards and declared in August 2011 that he had given up pot, but it was his battle with pneumonia and subsequent three-week coma in late 2011 (in addition to waking up speaking in a West Country accent) that convinced him to give up weed once and for all. “George hasn’t touched pot since his illness. Those days for him are definitely over,” said a friend in July 2012. “He never wants to be that ill again and he knows just how close he was to losing his life. He’s treating every day as a gift and he isn’t going to slip back into his old ways.”



Andre 3000

At the peak of his fame with Outkast, singer Andre 3000 “always kept an ounce” of weed with him. But in a 2003 interview with The Guardian, he revealed that he had quit smoking pot and drinking (in addition to becoming a vegan) in 1998 after realizing that the drug had taken control of his life. “I was kind of abusing it. I wasn’t looking my best. I had a platinum album out and I would do stuff like go to [the] projects to buy weed,” he said. Ten years later, it seems that Andre 3000 is still both drug and meat-free



Neil Young

The rock legend has weed references in several of his classic songs including “Roll Another Number (For the Road)," but has now been sober for over two years after giving up booze and pot to write his 2012 memoir Waging Heavy Peace. “I did it for 40 years. Now I want to see what it’s like to not do it. It’s just a different perspective,” he said in a Guardian interview last year. Young also explained in his memoir that “the straighter I am, the more alert I am, the less I know myself and the harder it is to recognize myself. I need a little grounding in something and I am looking for it everywhere.”



Paul McCartney

It's never too late to quit smoking pot: just ask Paul McCartney. The former Beatles member had been an unabashed weed smoker since the ‘60s and was infamously arrested in Japan for possession of pot in 1980. But just months before his 70th birthday, McCartney revealed in a February 2012 interview that he was giving up smoking for the sake of his eight-year-old daughter, Beatrice. “I smoked my share. When you’re bringing up a youngster, your sense of responsibility does kick in,” he said. “If you’re lucky, at some point ... enough’s enough. You just don’t seem to think it’s necessary.”



Lady Gaga

The Little Monster leader had long been a weed aficionado and even smoked a joint on stage during a concert in Amsterdam last year. But as her hip injury grew worse on her Born This Way Ball tour, the singer revealed that she was smoking up to 15 joints per day to help numb the pain.  "I was just numbing, numbing, numbing myself then sleeping it off, then getting on stage, killing it in pain, then getting off and smoking, smoking, smoking, not knowing what the pain was," she admitted last month. Gaga underwent hip surgery last February, but found herself unable to kick her weed habit. She credits performance artist Marina Abramovic with helping her to get sober last summer on a bizarre retreat, which included being sent into the woods blindfolded to help find her “way home.” Although the singer admits to now smoking “a little bit,” she said this is the “soberest” she’s been in years.



Snoop Lion

The rapper’s long-standing love of weed has even led to him doing anti-drug ads while completely under the influence, but he vowed to stop smoking pot over a decade ago. “Drugs cloud your vision. I was having fun when I was getting high ... [but] I’m 30 years old now,” he said in January 2003. “I said, ‘Let me stop smoking dope so I can get a better vision of myself, see who I am and what I meant to the world.” But less than two years later, he admitted to smoking pot regularly again and was arrested for possession of marijuana in January 2012. He’s even turned his love of the chronic into a business, endorsing his own rolling papers and strains of weed, in addition to writing the theme song for Discovery Channel show Weed Wars.

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