When you hear testimonials from patients regarding how cannabis saved their life, it’s hard for your opinion not to shift on the plant. Marijuana can help people when used for medicinal purposes, and in some cases save their lives.
For all the recreational fun that people enjoy—and should enjoy—with weed, it’s also important to remember the important medicinal benefits it provides for people. Though it may surprise you, that also includes celebrities. Some of the staunchest supporters of cannabis publically are celebrities who directly experienced the beneficiary health properties marijuana provides. Here is a look at celebrities who say marijuana helps them with various medical problems.
Patrick Stewart
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The actor behind iconic roles such as Professor X and Captain Jean-Luc Picard always carries himself like a professional. He rarely complains and plays the Hollywood game like few ever has. You probably wouldn’t guess Stewart is a cannabis user unless you looked. As he told Esquire UK, Stewart uses a cannabis spray to treat pain in his hands.
I mean, my main problem is my hands don’t work very well. But thanks to cannabis they work much better than they used to. Thanks to the law in California now, it’s just a spray that I put on.
Morgan Freeman
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“Don’t give up the ganja,” Morgan Freeman infamously said back in 2003. So it’s been no secret Freeman has supported the cannabis community for a while. However, his usage goes beyond recreational. After suffering a car accident in 2008, he told The Daily Beast how cannabis helps him manage his daily pain.
Marijuana has many useful uses,” he told The Daily Beast. “I have fibromyalgia pain in this arm, and the only thing that offers any relief is marijuana. They’re talking about kids who have grand mal seizures, and they’ve discovered that marijuana eases that down to where these children can have a life. That right there, to me, says, ‘Legalize it across the board!’”
Melissa Etheridge
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While the singer-songwriter launched the cannabis-infused wine No Label, her strongest connection to cannabis remains her advocacy. Following a diagnosis of breast cancer, Etheridge embraced cannabis and her children now think of it as “medicine.”
“It was a wake-up call for me,” she said. “When I used it as medicine, it became so clear to me that it has been maligned and misunderstood, and I really wanted to help people who are suffering. Going through chemotherapy is suffering…and cannabis helps so many parts of just that. That’s just the beginning of what it does medicinally.”
Lady Gaga
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The pop star uses marijuana for both inspiration and the plant’s medical benefits. After suffering a hip injury, Lady Gaga should’ve rested. Instead she toured and was in such pain that marijuana was the only thing that could help her continue.
“I was smoking 15 joints a day. … I was just numbing, numbing, numbing myself and then sleeping it off and then getting on stage, killing it in pain, then getting off and smoking, smoking, smoking, not knowing what the pain was,” Gaga told Attitude Magazine in 2013.
She also added: “Now I smoke a little bit at night just, you know, for fun. But not to cope—that’s the difference. I’m the soberest I’ve ever been in the past five years.”
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Oliver Stone
The film director served two tours in Vietnam, where he was wounded twice and would earn multiple awards for his service, including the Purple Heart. He told High Times in 2012 that using marijuana “made the difference between staying human and becoming a beast.”
“A lot of people in [my] platoon used it, not on the front lines, but in the back to relax and stay in touch with themselves. I looked on it as a lifesaver at the time,” the lifelong cannabis users said. We [who smoked] walked out relatively whole. … The guys who did dope were more conscious of life.”
Whoopi Goldberg
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Back in 2014, Whoopi Goldberg wrote a column for The Cannabist entitled “My vape pen and I, a love story.” She wrote how the pen allows her to manage daily pain experience from her glaucoma, instead of being dependent on pain meds.
“[H]er ability to help me live comfortably with glaucoma makes her one of the more important figures in my day to day,” Goldberg wrote. “The vape pen has changed my life. No, I’m not exaggerating. In fact, her name is Sippy. Yes, she’s a she. And yes, I named her Sippy because I take tiny, little sips—sassy sips, even—from her. And with each sip comes relief—from pressure, pain, stress, discomfort.”
