Sharon Stone stopped smoking weed and weaned off a post-stroke medication in the space of weeks — and the withdrawal was brutal.
The Basic Instinct actress revealed all of this in a candid new interview with Variety. She reflected on the life-altering stroke she suffered in 2001 and the medications she has taken in the years since as part of her recovery.
“I got off one of my medications that I was on for my stroke last September, and they said I couldn’t go off of it,” she explained to the outlet. “They said, ‘You can’t go off of it. You can never go off of it.’ I’m like, ‘I’m going off it,’ and it was like going off of f****** heroin. I was sick as a frigging dog for four and a half months. I just thought, ‘I want my life back.’ I had gotten off the majority of the drugs over the years that they had put me on. But I was like, ‘I want a drug-free life.’”
She continued, “Once I got off that, I decided I’m going to quit smoking pot. And because I think they put so much stuff in it now — they really do — when I stopped smoking pot, I also got sick. It’s not like you’re pulling it out of the ground anymore. It’s not like when we were kids. I got pretty sick for a month. I went to my neurologist, and he said, ‘Sharon, I’ve had people dying in the emergency room from marijuana.’”
Stone has had a really difficult health journey over the years.
Earlier this year, she opened up about her 2001 stroke during an interview on the Today show. Co-host Jenna Bush Hager asked her about her painting journey and if she had taken the activity up to help her get through the aftermath of her stroke.
“I started painting when I was little,” she explained, adding that her aunt had introduced her to the art form.
“But then in the ’90s I was pretty busy — being a movie star — so I stopped painting almost entirely,” Stone said. “But then COVID happened, and I had all that free time when everybody else was making sourdough and learning another language, and I decided to pick up the brush again.”
She continued, “It did recalibrate, and it allowed me to process the impact of what had happened to me. Not only having the stroke, but not being able to go back to work. Because at first I couldn’t go back to work, because I’d lost my memory, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t see straight. And it took me a long time to regain myself. And by the time I did, I’d really lost my place in the business. I’d lost my box-office viability.”
In addition to the stroke, Stone also had tumors in her b****** in the early 2000s, which luckily ended up being benign. However, her husband’s reaction to her diagnosis at the time led to the end of their marriage, so not only did she suffer a health scare, but also a huge emotional loss.
The actress was married to Phil Bronstein between 1998 and 2004, and to Michael Greenburg between 1984 and 1987.
