Travis Barker had a huge wake-up call that influenced his decision to stop smoking weed.
During a Wednesday, November 11, interview on the “Big Bro With Kid Cudi” podcast, Barker, 50, recalled that he once smoked 10 to 15 blunts a day, but a sobering diagnosis from his doctor helped him curb the habit.
“I only quit because I got diagnosed with precancer of the esophagus,” he shared with rapper Kid Cudi. “I loved blunts, and I would smoke too much. So that was the only thing. My doctor was like, ‘This is your warning shot, Trav. Don’t f*** around. You gotta stop smoking.’ Or I would have never stopped. I thought I could be like Willie Nelson and smoke ‘til the day I died.”
Prior to that, the Blink-182 drummer said, “I don’t know if I was high anymore … It was just maintaining, you know?”
Barker described getting sober after his 2008 near-fatal plane crash.
“I didn’t get sober until I was in the burn center for six months, and then life hit me,” he said. “That was my time to get sober. I stopped with all the opiates, stopped with all the weed. Under the worst circumstances, but I did get sober.”
Despite giving up weed, Barker admitted, “I miss it. I won’t lie. I think about it all the time.”
These days, the musician has found healthier habits to help him stay sober, including running, which he took up after his ex-wife, Shanna Moakler, became pregnant with the couple’s first child, son Landon, 23. (Barker also shares daughter Alabama, 20, and stepdaughter Atiana De La Hoya, 27, with Moakler, and son Rocky, 3, with current wife Kourtney Kardashian.)
“When my ex-wife was pregnant with Landon, I was like, ‘I need to be healthy. I need to be healthier,’” he remembered. “At the time, it was like … walking around with jars of blunts. That’s all I knew. But I was like, ‘Oh man, I’m having a son,’ so I started running to the freeway and back. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just like, ‘I gotta be healthy. I gotta be a badass dad. I gotta be the best dad I can be.’”
“I also walked into a boxing gym, started boxing, learning how to jump rope,” he added. “I just wanted to be a better human. 20 years later, a couple of miles a day keep the demons away. It really helped me stay sober. You can’t run half a marathon if you’re doing drugs.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
