Sharon Stone says she quit cannabis after years of using it to cope with seizures and other neurological effects of the stroke she suffered in 2001. She now presents both that decision and her efforts to reduce her medications as part of a broader attempt to reclaim control of her life.
Sharon Stone recently spoke about her health and once again discussed her relationship with cannabis. The Basic Instinct actress revealed that she decided to quit weed and stop taking one of the medications she had been prescribed following the 2001 stroke that nearly cost her life.
Stone, 68, said she wanted to reclaim her life and stop depending on substances. But her history with marijuana is less straightforward than that statement suggests: for years, the actress had described using it as a way to cope with the neurological aftereffects of that life-changing event.
Sharon Stone had been cutting back on medications for years
For Stone, the decision to quit weed was not an isolated one. In a recent Variety interview, she said that she had been trying for years to reduce the number of substances that had been part of her daily life since the stroke. She explained that over time she had managed to stop taking “the majority of the drugs” prescribed to her following the event.
The actress did not specify which medications she had originally been taking or what they were for. Her account frames the decision as part of a broader effort to regain autonomy after decades of treatment and living with neurological aftereffects.
Stone described the past year as a period of personal recovery. “This has been a period for me in this last year of really reclaiming my life,” she said. That process included both reducing her medications and quitting cannabis.
From smoking pot in an attempt to prevent seizures to quitting completely
In September 2001, Stone suffered a ruptured vertebral artery and experienced a brain hemorrhage that lasted nine days. Her recovery was long and difficult: she had to relearn how to walk, talk, and read, stepped away from acting, and continued to face seizures and other neurological difficulties. She has also stated that the process affected her career, her finances, and her family life.
In October 2023, the actress explained that cannabis had become part of how she got through daily life. “For so long, I smoked marijuana to try not to ever have a seizure in public,” she said. She didn’t mention dosages, strains, medical recommendations, or specific products. But she did make clear what was driving her use: she was embarrassed about having a seizure in front of other people and feared it would ultimately close doors for her in Hollywood.
Her public connection to the plant was no secret either. In 2017, she attended the launch of Beboe, a luxury cannabis brand that sought to normalize its use among a sophisticated audience. Her attendance did not prove that she was a customer, investor, or ambassador, but it did place her closer to the cannabis world.
Stone revealed that in September 2025, against her doctors’ advice, she stopped taking one of the medications prescribed after her stroke. She didn’t say which one it was or whether she tapered off it gradually. She did say that the experience was “like going off of fucking heroin” and that she was very ill for four and a half months.
After that, she quit cannabis as well. She said she became ill again, this time for about a month.
Stone attributed her reaction to what she believes is being added to cannabis today, saying that “they put so much stuff in it now.” She added: “It’s not like you’re pulling it out of the ground anymore. It’s not like when we were kids.” She also said her neurologist told her he had seen people die in emergency rooms in marijuana-related cases.
It remains unclear whether the symptoms she described were related to withdrawal, the type of product she was using, or another health issue. What her story does show is a profound shift in her relationship with marijuana: she went from using it for years to try to avoid seizures in public to including it among the substances she decided to quit in order to regain control of her life.
Photo by Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
