A-List Actress Warns Quitting Pot Left Her ‘Sick’

Actress Sharon Stone said she experienced significant withdrawal symptoms after quitting marijuana, warning others that the pot people smoke today is very different from what it was decades ago.

The 68-year-old “Basic Instinct” star discussed what happened after using cannabis following a stroke she suffered in 2001.

“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,” Stone said during an interview with Variety. “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*cking 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.’”

“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,” she added. “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 previously complained that the stroke had cost her millions of dollars and ruined relationships.

“People took advantage of me during that time. I had $18 million saved because of all my success, but when I got back into my bank account, it was all gone. My refrigerator, my phone — everything was in other people’s names,” Stone told The Hollywood Reporter in 2024. “I had zero money,” she added.

The stroke occurred when Stone was 43. The Academy Award nominee noticed her body felt numb, and there was a “terrible pain” in her head. She was diagnosed with a brain bleed and given a 1% chance of survival at the time.