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Gene Simmons may be a rockstar, but he says he doesn't do drugs or alcohol — except that one time he accidentally ate six weed brownies in the '70s.
During an interview on the "Your Mom's House with Christina P. and Tom Segura" podcast, Gene and his son, Nick, shared an anecdote about how the singer accidentally got high at a party meant to celebrate Kiss hosting a record-breaking number of shows in Detroit.
"The whole room is full, and I'm just seeing the brownies piled on it, and I love that stuff," Gene said on the podcast. "Everybody's like 'Let's smoke, let's put things up our ass.' No, just give me cake."
A woman was handing out the brownies at the party, and Gene recalled constantly asking her for more.
"Then I started, like a dog with a bone, just following her around. 'Can I have another one?' 'You want another one?' And I just kept eating it — six," he said.
Nick added that his father was "so removed from drug culture" that he didn't know people put cannabis into baked goods — which explained the fiasco.
Very soon, the high started to kick in, Gene said on the podcast.
"The room started to get bigger, and my head started to get smaller — all the way down to the size of an olive on my shoulder," he said. "I remember this — I started to open my eyes so that people would think I was normal."
The singer also recalled feeling like his hands and feet were "ballooned up like a cartoon" until he ran into the editor of Creem, a rock music magazine, who took him to an eatery for a drink.
Gene said that the eatery was packed with people, and everyone turned around to look at him as he entered because he was still dressed in his leather outfit.
But since he was high, he was under the impression that they were staring at him for other reasons.
"I'm thinking, 'They're all looking at me because my head is small.' So I try to make myself bigger," the rockstar said.
Looking back, Gene said he was completely unprepared for the experience.
"I never before — or since — had anything like that," Gene said.
The Kiss front man also shared on the podcast that he chose to stay away from drugs and alcohol because of his mother, who survived the Holocaust.
"She was in a concentration camp when she was 14 years of age, and I never wanted to break her heart," Gene said. "I was always aware I never wanted to disappoint her — there was enough aggravation. So I literally never smoked cigarettes, never got high, never got drunk."
This is not the first time that the singer has spoken about abstaining from drugs and alcohol.
In 2016, he told the LA Times that his choice to be drug and alcohol-free helped him stay on top of his game even after four decades.
"You and I are lined up along with 10 other guys, do you think you'll do better than the guy who is a little tipsy? Because the alcohol is not going to help him," Gene said.
In the same interview, he also said that he didn't want to hurt his mother any more than she had already suffered.
"I'm my mother's only child," Gene said. "I was concerned I had no right to harm my mother. Life did that enough."
During an appearance on "Good Morning Britain" in 2022, the singer shared that his clean lifestyle has allowed him to look great despite already being in his seventies, per The Independent.
"So clean life — by the way takes away a lot of lines on your face, I'm not wearing any make-up at all. You should see me though, I wear more make-up and higher heels than the ladies do," he said on the show, per The Independent.
