Rob Lowe recalled a memorable 1986 outing with Michael J. Fox that led to the duo getting caught red-handed with something green.
“There was a bus tour through California for Prop 65, which was about cleaning up our water system, and everybody on the planet was on it,” Lowe remembered on the Wednesday, August 28, episode of Ted Danson’s “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” podcast. “But there were two different buses. … We got pulled over for speeding, but also because Michael J. Fox and I were smoking pot out of the top of the Greyhound bus roof.”
“The cop pulled us over and it was like a clown car — out came Whoopi Goldberg, Cher, Judd Nelson, Michael J. Fox, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Robert Downey Jr., Jane Fonda, Danny Glover,” the former Brat Pack member recalled.
Danson asked Lowe why the bus was pulled over, and he responded, “We had the top emergency hatch off, Michael and I, and we were smoking pot.”
Lowe, 60, has been vocal about his sobriety journey after struggling with alcohol addiction in the ’80s. The Outsiders star gave up drinking in 1990 with the support of his wife, Sheryl Berkoff. (The couple married in 1991.)
“Listen, she may have saved my life, really,” he told Entertainment Tonight in 2021. “I mean, she met me when I was at the end of my ’80s run of wild boy craziness and she was worth changing my life for. And so I am really lucky that that happened to me. Maybe I had changed it on my own — maybe — but it’s a big maybe. And just when I met her, I knew that if I could not make it with her, I definitely could not make it work with anyone else.”
Lowe celebrated 34 years of sobriety this year, and in an interview with People earlier this month, the actor recalled how a family tragedy led to him seeking help.
“I remember like it was yesterday. My mom telling me [on the answering machine] to ‘pick up, pick up’ because my grandpa had had a heart attack. I couldn’t deal with it in the state I was in, and I needed to go to sleep to wake up so I could deal with it,” the St. Elmo’s Fire star said, adding that he had a bottle of tequila beside him.
“Who doesn’t keep a bottle of Cuervo Gold by their bedside table? That was the final wake-up call. I’ve been sober ever since,” Lowe explained.
