Willie Nelson Once Saved His Weed From A House Fire To Evade Arrest

Willie Nelson is known as one of the most legendary country artists globally and one of the best too. Before Seth Rogan and Cheech and Chong or even Snoop Dog, there was Nelson. The country artist had been very outspoken about his love for cannabis long before it became legally or socially accepted.

Several years before it was legalized, Nelson talked about weed's medicinal and economic benefits to anyone who would listen. Since he stopped drinking and smoking cigarettes in 1978, pot has been Nelson's only recreational drug, and he even has a cannabis company called Willie's Reserve.

Decades ago, Nelson shared that his relationship with weed once drove him to make a rather tough decision. The country artist had to choose between running into a house fire or facing possible arrest by the police.

One would think the decision would be obvious, right? Wrong! Nelson decided on what most of us wouldn't even try doing and lost something precious in the process. Keep reading to find out what.

In a September issue in 1980, Nelson told People about the terrifying incident. Right after his second divorce from country singer Shirley Collie, Nelson got married to his third wife, Connie Koepke Nelson, and that same year his house caught fire.

"By the time I got there, it was burning real good, but I had this pound of Colombian grass inside," he said.

The country singer explained that he immediately ran into the house, not because he was brave or his love for pot; Nelson saved the weed because he didn't want to be caught with it. "I wasn't being brave running in there to get my dope—I was trying to keep the firemen from finding it and turning me over to the police."

He managed to save his cannabis and evade arrest, but the "On The Road Again" artist lost over 100 tapes of unrecorded songs to the fire. The fire ended up spurring his move to Austin, Texas, where he began touring dance halls, country fairs, and violence-prone bars in a used Greyhound bus.

When Nelson got into weed, the artist cut back on old habits like drinking, smoking cigarettes, and taking prescription pills. In his 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, the artist spoke about how much weed had done for him and that he wasn't sure he would have lived as long without it.

"I wouldn't be alive. It saved my life, really. I wouldn't have lived 85 years if I'd have kept drinking and smoking like I was when I was 30, 40 years old," the singer explained.

Nelson first got into weed in 1954, but it took him six months to get high. He was offered a blunt by a local musician named Fred Lockwood and was initially too scared to try it out. After the first time he got high, Nelson went full throttle. People quoted an old friend of the country singer who said, "Most people smoke to get high, Willie smokes to get normal."

Nelson's love for weed didn't extend to other drugs. According to his 1988 biography, the artist experimented with hallucinogens like LSD and acid then realized they weren't for him. He told People magazine that he even prohibited his band members from using other drugs except for weed. "If you're wired, you're fired," he said.

Nelson has been smoking pot for decades, and according to the artist, it has done more good than harm. The 88-year-old sees himself as the real-life image of what could happen after a lifetime of continuously smoking weed.

In his Rolling Stone interview, he said, "I'm kind of the canary in the mine if people are wondering what happens if you smoke that sh** a long time."

"You know, if I start jerking or shaking or something, don't give me no more weed. But as long as I'm all right," he added. Furthermore, in his 2019 Rolling Stone interview, Nelson discussed how happy he was that marijuana's medicinal benefits were finally taken seriously. "It's nice to watch it being accepted, knowing you were right all the time about it — that it was not a killer drug," he said. "It's a medicine."

The Hall of Fame inductee liked to joke about how he had never seen weed kill anyone. "I don't know anybody that's ever died from smoking pot. Had a friend of mine that said a bale fell on him and hurt him pretty bad, though."

Nelson's Cannabis company was created because the artist developed bronchitis and couldn't smoke. His wife, Annie D'Angelo, made him weed chocolate instead and went about perfecting the recipe.

D'Angelo gave some to a friend, which was how the business started. At first, the couple was skeptical because they didn't want to become "the Wal-Mart of cannabis," but they eventually gave in.

By 2019, Willie's Reserve became fairly lucrative and was available in six states. Going about the business wasn't easy because the drug was still federally prohibited the regulations were always changing.

"The regulations change like chameleons," D'Angelo said during an interview. "The edibles are actually harder [to produce legally] than the flower. You have to have specific kitchens. You have to have specific licenses that take years to get."