Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson credits marijuana with saving his life, said Patrick Doyle in Rolling Stone. The country music legend smoked his first joint in 1954 and switched over to using pot exclusively in 1978. He’d been drinking heavily and smoking several packs of cigarettes daily, suffering through brutal hangovers and multiple bouts of pneumonia. “I wouldn’t have lived 85 years if I’d have kept drinking and smoking like I was when I was 30, 40 years old,” he says. “I think that weed kept me from wanting to kill people. And probably kept a lot of people from wanting to kill me, too—out there drunk, running around.” Weed, he says, lets him “delete and fast-forward” through tough times, helping him forgive and forget. “You don’t dwell on s--- a lot,” he says. “The short-term [memory loss] thing they talk about is probably true, but it’s probably good for you.” Nelson is gratified to see marijuana gaining mainstream acceptance. But he gets angry when he thinks about all the people behind bars for marijuana. “A lot of it is because people get in there who don’t even have the bail money to get out,” he says. “Let those guys out and start working and paying taxes.”

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