NEED TO KNOW
Lukas Nelson wouldn’t call himself completely sober.
The country singer, who released American Romance in June, spoke about sobriety while on Rolling Stone’s podcast Nashville Now. Lukas, 36, said that he had been smoking weed “all day long” during the pandemic and came to a “crossroads” of what he was doing with his health, including drinking.
Traveling constantly made it hard for him to keep a routine, so the lockdown let him slow things down and create one that worked for him. While he quit drinking, he said that quitting smoking weed was “harder.”
Marijuana helped “distract him” from things he was “feeling inside.”
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“I wouldn’t call it sober completely, because I’ll still do mushrooms. Once a year, twice a year, I’ll do mushrooms and check in with myself,” Lukas said. “But I don’t do anything habitually more that I don’t like. If I’m going to have a habit, it’s going to be something that’s good for me.”
He also spoke about how his father, weed enthusiast Willie Nelson, felt about his lifestyle change.
“My dad respects individuality. He respects being yourself. He and I both now don’t smoke weed, so that’s great. I don’t think it mattered to him either way,” he said, detailing how “into” marijuana he was. “When I was smoking I’d smoke six, seven joints a day,” he said, for a “baseline of relaxation.”
“I was so into weed,” concluded Lukas.
Willie, 92, revealed earlier this year that he no longer smokes weed. He told Forbes in June that he “can’t smoke anymore.” “My lungs have already said, ‘Don’t do that,’ ” the country legend, who has his own weed company, revealed.
“So, I don’t really do anything now much except a few edibles.”
In 2019, Willie said that he stopped smoking cigarettes. A publicist for him at the time clarified that the singer does “still taste the flower.” “Willie doesn’t smoke any more or any less [weed],” the publicist added.
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Lukas told PEOPLE in June what he would hope fans get out of American Romance, which includes doing something for his own legacy.
“I feel lost, somewhat, in a world where there are a lot of people out there getting very popular, doing something completely different, but I have to stay true to what I do,” he said at the time.
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Lukas also said that he crafted this new album to “connect” with fans “who will follow me until I’m 90.” “I have to play music that is relevant to my own generation and to who I want to be artistically, relevant to my own people.”
American Romance is available to stream.
