Cancer treatments can have a whole host of side effects. Cannabis, medical or otherwise, can certainly help alleviate some of them, or at least make cancer patients' lives easier. Megadeth vocalist Dave Mustaine tells Metal Hammer that smoking weed (or whatever method he was using) definitely helped with his appetite and basically just get him through treatment.
Mustaine also tells Metal Hammer that he's not into CBD Oil. Or as the man himself puts it, "If you’re gonna do it, get the good stuff."
“Everybody’s treatment is different, but Bruce Dickinson had been through throat cancer about five years ago, so he was able to give me a lot of insight into what to expect. His biggest advice was to listen to the doctors and don’t rush to get back onstage. They told him to hold off, but he went back out to perform and nothing came out. Well, OK. I get it. Bruce waited a month before his first show, so I held off a little longer. My last treatment was in September and I made plenty of time to rest, exercise and eat right before we went back out on tour. We did 22 dates overseas, and I feel great now, except for the fatigue. But I think a lot of that might be due to um, extracurricular activities. Staying up late. Not sleeping. Maybe a little, you know…”
Thumb and forefinger to his lips, Dave inhales sharply, making the universal symbol for partaking of the herb. Could he be referring to the alleged medicinal benefits of CBD oil? “Don’t screw around with the oil, man,” he growls in the same gravel baritone as his crushing thrash classics. Our eyes go wide as the voice from sixth grade Headbangers Ball comes to life.
Dave cackles at our reaction, pushing back a wayward strand of hair. “If you’re gonna do it, get the good stuff. I think the world is just now finding out the beauty of cannabis and everything it can do for you. I hear people talk how it’s good for cancer patients. C’mon, it’s good for any fucking patient! The radiation zapped my salivary glands so I couldn’t make spit, which made it really hard to swallow and get food down. They gave me this crazy mouthwash to use that had Benadryl and lidocaine in it, but I still couldn’t eat. So cannabis helped with that, except I got a terrible craving for kiddie cereal. I went to the store and got, like, 20 boxes.”
Mustaine famously has told the story that he traded an ounce of weed for the first record he ever got, so he's no stranger to the plant.
Medical cannabis is currently legal in 33 states, while recreational cannabis is legal in 11 states. Megadeth is currently legal in all 50 states. Mustaine is currently tracking vocals for the new Megadeth album.
