Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson has revealed why he decided to give up marijuana after two decades of regular use, tying his decision directly to the band’s highly anticipated comeback.
The guitarist told Rolling Stone that smoking pot once sparked creativity in the studio. He eventually felt it was undermining his performance and focus as Rush prepared for the road again.
“I really enjoyed smoking pot,” Alex Lifeson said. “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 went on to describe how his growing self-doubt, combined with the pressure of the Rush reunion, pushed him to make a change.
“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,” he continued. “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 recalled the moment he decided to get rid of everything connected to the habit, admitting it wasn’t easy to let go of every last item.
“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,” Lifeson said. “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 the cleanup extended well beyond his home. He added that he has no regrets about the decision since.
“I went to every little place I had stashes… it was a garbage bag like this, full of pipes and bongs,” he said. “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.'”
Lifeson’s decision to give up a habit that had followed him for two decades speaks to just how much is riding on this chapter for Rush. The band’s return has already exceeded every expectation set for it.
The scale of that return has been staggering. What started as a 22-date run for the 2026 leg of the band’s “Fifty Something” tour sold out almost instantly. Organizers expanded the schedule to 58 shows across 24 cities.
