Actor James Garner, who died over the weekend, is a model of versatility.
Best-known for his turn on "The Rockford Files," we remember him fondly as the man who made a Nazi POW camp seem fun — and the ideal place to run an illicit moonshine still, with help from Steve McQueen — and thanks to Celebstoner, we are reminded of Garner's secret to enjoyable longevity: marijuana.
Like McQueen, Garner was a regular marijuana smoker. And unlike the shorter-lived McQueen, Garner smoked cannabis for 50 years, and credited marijuana with improving his health and well-being immensely. He also called for legalization in 2011 in his autobiography. What's not to like?
Garner credited marijuana with opening his mind "to a lot of things" in his youth. In old age, cannabis soothed his arthritis pain, he wrote in The Garner Files, his 2011 memoir.
"I started smoking it in my late teens. I drank to get drunk but ultimately didn't like the effect. Not so with grass. It had the opposite effect from alcohol: it made me more tolerant and forgiving."I did a little bit of cocaine in the Eighties, courtesy of John Belushi, but fortunately I didn't like it. But I smoked marijuana for 50 years and I don't know where I'd be without it. It opened my mind and now it eases my arthritis. After decades of research I've concluded that marijuana should be legal and alcohol illegal."
"But," the noted wisecracker added, "good luck with that."
What's most interesting about this is how Garner kept his cannabis habit on the down-low. That, and how being a regular weed smoker had little impact on an extremely successful film and television career — unless, of course, cannabis is what helped Garner through it.
Mahalo, Maverick.
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