Jelly Roll Says That Marijuana Keeps Him Sober
Jelly Roll says that marijuana keeps him sober. In a recent interview, he said that smoking pot keeps him off of “harder” controled substances, according to Us. “My stance on marijuana will always be the same,” he said. “I believe marijuana has helped me in so many regards, with my anxiety. This is a hot-button topic, but, truly, marijuana has kept me sober.”
He said that in “a world without weed” he would be drinking codeine, popping Xanax and snorting cocaine again. But, he said, “[In] a world with weed, I’ll be alright.” Jelly Roll has often addressed his struggles with substances, including in the (NSFW) song, “Sober.”
He admitted that he has sober friends who don’t use marijuana or any other mind-altering substances, and he respects that. But, he says, “That’s just not how my sobriety worked out.”
In an interview last year, he noted that he “never really” had a problem with alcohol and that he still will “have a cocktail” on occasion. He noted that the night of the 2023 CMA Awards, he partied, but that he stayed away from drugs.
The practice of abstaining from harder substances but using marijuana is often referred to as “California sober.” In a 2023 op-ed in Psychology Today, “A New Assessment of ‘California Sober,'” Lantie Elisabeth Jorandby M.D. (an expert in addiction psychiatry and addiction medicine) wrote, “One of the key flaws of the Cali Sober approach is that it’s based on the recent reputational revival of marijuana—that it’s fine, harmless, doesn’t hurt your brain, isn’t that addictive, and even has medicinal qualities.”
She says, “The fact is, marijuana can damage your brain, especially in young people whose brains are still developing (this happens until age 25 or so), and it can be quite addictive.”
She notes that marijuana is a gateway drug; in other words, it can lead the brain to respond addictively to other drugs. She adds that marijuana is more powerful now than ever, and being more potent makes it more addictive. Finally, she notes that many “Cali sober” types are kids and people who use marijuana regularly before the age of 18 or four to seven times more likely to develop cannabis use disorder than people who start using as adults.
However, some experts are more in favor of “California sober.” Peter Grinspoon, M.D., is a primary care physician and a cannabis specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of the new book Seeing Through the Smoke: A Cannabis Expert Untangles the Truth about Marijuana. Last year, he wrote an op-ed, “In Defense of Being ‘Cali Sober.'” In it, he noted that while “abstinence only” models of recovery work for many people, they don’t work for everyone. “It isn’t cheating to use medicines or other substances to maintain recovery,” he says. “In fact, anyone who wants to enter and stay in recovery mainly must find a way to eschew the continued use of the specific drug that derailed your life in a way that is causing ongoing distress.”
