That Time When Alex Trebek Accidentally Ate A Bunch Of Hash Brownies

This is Jeopardy! And now, here’s your host, Alex Trebek!

Alex: Hello and welcome to Jeopardy!, America’s favorite answer-and-question game. Yes, we give the answers, and then it’s up to the contestants to come up with the questions.

Contestant: Alex, I’ll try “Getting High With A Little Help From My Friends” for $100, please.

Alex: OK, here’s your answer: “This tasty treat knocked my on my ass for two days.”

Contestant: What are hash brownies?

Alex: Correct!

That’s right. Years ago, long before cannabis legalization, the game show host and “pulled a Maureen Dowd” long before pulling a Maureen Dowd was even a thing. In a lengthy Q&A with Daily Beast, here is how Trebek described the unfortunate edible incident:

As the story goes, when Trebek first arrived in California, he attended a swanky party at a friend’s beach house in Malibu and came across some delicious-looking brownies on display. Now Trebek, despite at one time resembling a ’70s porn star, was no hippie and hadn’t dabbled much in recreational marijuana, let alone potent edibles. So needless to say, he had no idea what he was in for.

“It was by accident! I didn’t know what they were,” he tells me. “I had just arrived in California and went to a friend’s house for dinner, and there were brownies. I love brownies—I’m a chocoholic—and I didn’t realize that they were hash brownies. And… whoa. That threw me for a loop. I took down about a half-dozen. The dinner party was on a Friday, and I was not able to leave that house until Sunday afternoon. I spent the next day and a half in bed. It was not a good trip, and I have not done any of that stuff since!”

This is not the first time Trebek has told this cannabis cautionary tale. Two years ago, Trebek boldly appeared on “The Howard Stern Show” and described the event similarly. There are a few minor discrepancies in two versions of the story: the number of brownies he consumed and the day he left the party host’s home:

“I went to this party at a home in Malibu and I didn’t know the people who were hosting the party and they had hash brownies. I love chocolate, and I ate four or five hash brownies. The party was on a Friday night… I didn’t leave their home until Monday morning.”

Trebek says he has not tried cannabis since.

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