Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson says he didn’t always light up by choice, sometimes, it was because his family pleaded with him to calm down. On a recent episode of the “Confidence of Champions” podcast, Tyson recalled how his loved ones urged him to resume using cannabis after a self-imposed pause.
“When I’m drunk, I’m fucking making a fool of myself,” Tyson said. “… When I took five days off from smoking weed … My wife and my kids would get scared. ‘Please smoke, Daddy.’”
He added he wasn’t lashing out, but rather his energy “became too intense not high.” Without cannabis, he described himself as someone others found intimidating or uneasy around.
A Shift from Chaos to Calm
Tyson emphasized that weed helped him keep peace — both inside and outside the ring. “You get some weed, they start taking selfies,” he said, contrasting how alcohol often fuels violence while marijuana encourages tranquility.
He recalled the moment when his family expressed fear over his absence of cannabis. “They were scared,” he admitted, describing how his mood and demeanor changed during those sober days.
In his view, cannabis offered a form of stability. It turned him into “a whole different person,” one more grounded and less volatile.
Tyson’s relationship with cannabis stretches back decades. He’s previously said he “smoked every day,” even during exhibition fights. He owns a cannabis company, Tyson 2.0, and has publicly lobbied for cannabis rescheduling and reform.
He argues that cannabis helped him escape destructive habits. “It changed my whole life around,” he told lawmakers during a push for legalization advocacy.
More than business, Tyson frames his views as personal and transformational. He believes cannabis helped rescue him from past dependency on harder drugs.