Years of smoking marijuana have finally caught up with the Red-Headed Stranger. In a new interview with Houston’s KSAT TV, Willie Nelson has revealed that he has quit smoking pot as a result of recent health issues.
“I have abused my lungs quite a bit in the past, so breathing is a little more difficult these days and I have to be careful,” the 86-year-old Wilson explained.
“I started smoking cedar bark, went from that to cigarettes to whatever,” he said. “And that almost killed me.”
In recent years, Nelson has canceled a number of tour dates due to breathing issues. He previously sought to remedy the problem by quitting cigarettes, as he explained in an interview with Rolling Stone earlier this year.
“I used to smoke two or three packs of cigarettes a day and drank whatever there was there to drink and I had pneumonia four or five times, my lung collapsed, I almost died, so I said, ‘Wait a minute, I ain’t getting that high off of Chesterfields,’ so I threw out the cigarettes, rolled up 20 joints, stuck it in there, and I haven’t had a cigarette since,” Nelson said at the time.
Unfortunately, Nelson’s breathing issues have persisted. Over the summer, he called off a US tour, including the second leg of his Outlaw Music Festival.
MORE HERE: Story from Consequence of Sound