Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson has revealed that he gave up pot after around 20 years of regular use, saying it was affecting his playing and his confidence as the band prepared to return to the stage.
Lifeson spoke about the decision in a video interview with Rolling Stone, explaining that while smoking had helped his creativity in the studio, he felt his playing was better without it.
“I really enjoyed smoking pot,” he said (via Alternative Nation). “You know, I started smoking pot when I was a young teenager for the first time, and gone through periods where I didn’t, but certainly for the last, I don’t know how many, 20 years or so, I’ve been a pretty regular pot smoker. In the studio I enjoyed it because I found it did spark some creativity that was different from the straight world. But I never felt like the execution was as good as when I didn’t smoke pot. And it didn’t really matter because some of the projects that I was working on… I found that when I was playing, I wasn’t playing that well. I mean, I would play every night, but I didn’t feel like I was playing that well, and I thought maybe being high was interfering with that.”
Lifeson said self-doubt started to creep in as preparations for the reunion moved forward: “But I did start to have kind of negative feelings about my confidence, and about what was ahead of us, and that we were just like halfway through the process, and, you know, it’s too late to jump off this ship that’s screaming across the sea. I thought this is interfering with the way my brain should be working, and the kind of focus and discipline that I all of a sudden really wanted to have in my life.”
He then described clearing out his home the following day: “I got up the next morning, and I went to the bathroom, and I took all my little jars of pot and the pipes, I threw in a garbage bag. And then I went in the kitchen, and in that drawer I took all my pipes and threw it on the pot again. Then I went in the studio… I looked at one container of these pre-rolls, I thought, ‘Oh, I really like these. Maybe I’ll just hang on to these.’ And I was like, ‘Al, this is not the idea!’ So I tossed that in.”
Lifeson said he went through every hiding place he had and has not regretted the decision since: “I went to every little place I had stashes… It was a garbage bag like this, full of pipes and bongs. All my friends said, ‘Why did you throw it out? You could have called me!’ And the other day I was staying on stage thinking, ‘Thank God I’m not smoking pot anymore”
Rush have been on their “Fifty Something” tour since June, with Lifeson and Geddy Lee joined by German drummer Anika Nilles, who took over the drum seat once held by the late Neil Peart. It is the band’s first tour since 2015.
The North American dates run until December 17 in Vancouver, and the band will begin 2027 with shows in South America, starting in Buenos Aires in January.
