Given all that we know now, it’s hard to deny marijuana’s healing abilities. Whether it’s being used to stave off anxiety, or for pain treatment, cannabis’ therapeutic qualities are seemingly endless. And while it’s not necessarily known as a heart attack medication, apparently, it has the ability to treat even that, or at least according to actor/comedian Kevin Smith. On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Kevin Smith credits the plant for helping him survive, what turned out to be, a massive heart attack of his own.
Silent Bob’s Silent Attack
Smith sat down with Colbert to share some of the details of his night from hell. The 47-year-old was shooting his stand-up special for Showtime, Silent But Deadly, a title that would soon turn out to be an ironic case of foreshadowing.
Following the shoot, which lasted around two hours, Smith began to feel ill. According to the legendary comic book nerd, he had no idea he was suffering a massive heart attack at the time.
“I felt really bad, I laid down on the floor and ended up throwing up,” Smith explained. “I didn’t know what heart attack symptoms were.”
After paramedics were called and Smith was transported to a nearby hospital, he learned he was having a massive heart attack. Smith admitted he had smoked an enormous amount of weed that day and was inherently curious as to whether or not that was linked his current state.
It was linked, however, not in the way he initially thought.
“I honestly thought I was too high. I’d smoked a bunch of weed that day because I was doing the show and then I smoked a joint right before the show and then I got off stage and all of the sudden I had a heart attack,” Smith explained.
“I asked my doctor like after this was all done, I was like, ‘I hate to ask this question, man, but did I have a heart attack because of the weed? Because I smoked a joint right before the show.'”
Smith said he was surprised to learn that it was, in fact, the opposite.
“That weed saved your life,” Smith recalled the doctor telling him. “He said, you kept calm…they told you [you] were going through stuff and you kept calm the whole time, so that joint saved your life.”
Kevin Smith’s Life-Saving Kush
While Kevin Smith’s tale is an example of irony in every sense of the word, the results are far from surprising. Sure, we’ve all gotten a little too high to the point where our heart begins to race, but that’s more of a product of indiscretion, rather than the plant itself. Obviously, as Smith taught us all, there’s no such thing as getting too high and having a heart attack—only getting too high and surviving one.
