What you need to know
Lukas Nelson thanks sleep for helping him stay in the best shape of his life.
The 37-year-old singer-songwriter opens up to this week’s issue of PEOPLE about his decision to quit drinking and smoking marijuana nearly two years ago. The main motivation was the desire to get better quality sleep.
“Every time I drank alcohol or smoked marijuana, I was getting less sleep. Honestly, I credit the WHOOP band with helping me quit drinking,” he says of the fitness band, which tracks movement and sleep metrics. “I was like, ‘I’d better wake up feeling good,’ because even if I had one drink, it would just be so bad.”
Nelson, the son of country legend and marijuana aficionado Willie Nelson, said he wasn’t a big drinker, but smoking weed was more difficult to quit.
“I got clear about my feelings and faced a lot of fears, but I realized they weren’t that scary after all,” he says. “Now I can articulate my feelings and no longer want to run away from myself, which is great. I get a high from making the right decision every time. Now I’m addicted to the high of saying no. It feels great.”
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Among those fears? Nelson said flying was the inspiration for him to get his pilot’s license.
“I got my pilot’s license and did all the things I wanted to do, but I never would have done them when I was smoking a lot of pot, because I didn’t think I should do both at the same time,” he says.
The “Desurfacing Light” singer previously told Rolling Stone’s “Nashville Now” podcast that he doesn’t consider himself “completely” sober, as he still goes mushroom foraging once or twice a year.
He also talked about Willie’s reaction to quitting marijuana on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM radio show.
“My father, more than anyone else, respects people for who they are and who they are,” he explains, adding that the “biggest lie” he ever believed was that “I would make the same mistakes that my heroes make.”
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Willie, 92, also quit smoking marijuana in June, when his body told him it had had enough.
“My lungs are already saying, ‘Don’t do that,'” he says. “So I’m not doing anything right now except eating some food.”
Nelson and his famous father will be competing at the 2026 Grammy Awards, as both have albums nominated in the Best Traditional Country Album category. His debut solo album, “American Romance,” was released earlier this year, and Willie is preparing an album, “Oh What a Beautiful World.”
“I was a bit of an awkward kid, wondering who I was in the context of being the son of a celebrity,” Nelson says. “Music gave me a way to channel all my pain and alchemically transform it into something beautiful. Music truly saved my life. It kept me from going down a dark path and gave me meaning and purpose and confidence.”
