The Moment
Tish Cyrus is not sugarcoating what her life looked like when everything fell apart.
On a new episode of The Squeeze podcast, hosted by Tay Lautner (yes, Taylor Lautner’s wife, and yes, it’s a mental health show), the 58-year-old momager opened up about how she coped after two huge blows: the death of her mother, Loretta “Mammie” Finley, in 2020 and her “tragic” split from Billy Ray Cyrus after nearly three decades of marriage.
“I’ve been very open that I was a major weed smoker,” she told Lautner, explaining that she’s a “huge believer in plant medicine.” During the period when she lost her mom and her marriage was falling apart, she says weed became a form of “self-medicating,” even if she didn’t fully clock that in the moment.
According to Tish, the cannabis “kinda numbed all that pain” and let her keep moving without really processing what was happening. But when she decided to stop smoking, things got rough. She describes going into “full-on anxiety to the point of not functioning” and not understanding why her body and brain were spiraling.
She calls that stretch one of the “most probably tragic” periods of her life and says she was “just trying to survive.” Only recently, she says, has she started learning how to handle her anxiety in healthier ways, crediting therapy for helping her work through both the grief and her relationship with weed.
Now, Tish is remarried to actor Dominic Purcell, whom she wed in August 2023, and gushes that their relationship is “so safe” and free of drama. But she’s also honest that the happy ending came after a very messy middle.
The Take
I’ll say it: for a Hollywood mom, this is refreshingly un-glamorous.
Most celebrity wellness talk lives in one of two lanes: the perfectly curated “green juice and Pilates” fantasy or the dramatic “rock bottom memoir” years after the fact. Tish is doing something a little different here. She’s talking about what a lot of middle-aged women actually do when life blows up – they reach for something that takes the edge off, call it “medicine,” and power through.
In her case it wasn’t a bottle of chardonnay, it was weed. Same coping, different label.
What I find interesting is the tension in how she describes it. On one hand, she leans into the modern-language of wellness – “plant medicine,” using cannabis to soothe anxiety. On the other, she plainly calls it self-medicating and admits it “numbed” her pain instead of helping her face it. That’s basically the entire gray area of casual substance use in one person’s story.
Think of it like a scented candle that accidentally turns into a space heater. It starts as comfort – a little ritual at the end of a long day. But if you’re suddenly using it to heat the whole house, it wasn’t designed for that, and things can get dangerous fast. Tish is essentially admitting she started relying on her “comfort thing” to do a job that probably belonged to therapy, support, and medical care.
And the come-down fits what a lot of people describe when they stop numbing: all the feelings rush in. She says when she quit weed she hit anxiety “to the point of not functioning.” That doesn’t make weed evil; it does make her coping strategy look unsustainable.
The other piece here is generational. This is a woman in her late 50s, a Southern mom who came up in country music circles, openly calling herself a “major weed smoker” and talking about anxiety in clinical terms. Ten or twenty years ago, that alone would’ve been headline-shocking. Now, it lands as…oddly relatable.
Is she glamorizing weed? Not really. If anything, the story she tells – grief, numbness, panic once she quits, long slog in therapy – makes it clear there was no magic fix. The weed helped her stand still long enough to survive, but it didn’t spare her the suffering. And she knows it.
For a family whose drama is usually served up in neon lights, this might be one of the most quietly human Cyrus quotes we’ve gotten in a long time.
Receipts
Confirmed
Tish Cyrus admits to ‘self-medicating’ with weed after ‘tragic’ Billy Ray divorce https://t.co/fsRmNusIol pic.twitter.com/FMsfuXcN0l
— Page Six (@PageSix) January 15, 2026
- On The Squeeze podcast episode released in January 2026, Tish Cyrus says she was a “major weed smoker” and describes using cannabis as “almost like medicine” during the period when her mother died and her marriage ended.
- In that same conversation, she characterizes her use as “self-medicating,” says it “kinda numbed all that pain,” and recalls experiencing severe anxiety and an inability to function after she decided to stop smoking.
- Tish’s mother, Loretta “Mammie” Finley, died in 2020 at age 85. The Cyrus family publicly paid tribute to her at the time.
- According to publicly available divorce filings from April 2022, Tish filed to end her marriage to Billy Ray Cyrus after 29 years, citing “irreconcilable differences” and stating they had not lived together since February 2020.
- Tish married actor Dominic Purcell in August 2023, a wedding both of them shared publicly on social media and in red-carpet interviews.
- On the podcast, Tish says she is now “so much better,” credits therapy with helping her address anxiety and her reliance on weed, and calls her relationship with Purcell “so safe” with “no drama.”
Unverified / Reported
- Any detailed claims about long-term “family feuds” within the Cyrus clan or who sided with which parent are largely based on outside reporting and fan speculation, not something Tish spells out in this particular interview.
Primary sources include Tish Cyrus’s on-record comments on The Squeeze podcast (January 2026), publicly filed divorce documents from April 2022, and past public tributes from the Cyrus family in 2020.
Backstory (For Casual Readers)
If you only know Tish as “Miley’s mom,” here’s the quick refresher. Tish Cyrus was married to country star Billy Ray Cyrus for 29 years. Together, they raised a blended brood that includes pop superstar Miley Cyrus, singer Noah Cyrus, and DJ/TV personality Brandi Cyrus, and they all grew up in the glare of Hannah Montana and Nashville fame. Tish’s mother, Loretta “Mammie” Finley, was a visible presence too, often seen on set and at events with her grandkids, especially Miley. In 2020, Mammie died at 85. Two years later, in April 2022, Tish filed for divorce, saying she and Billy Ray had already been living apart for about two years. By August 2023, Tish had married Prison Break actor Dominic Purcell, while Billy Ray moved on with his own relationship and brief marriage to singer Firerose – all of which kept the Cyrus name very much in the headlines.
What’s Next
Tish is clearly in her “tell the truth and let people deal with it” era, and this weed-and-grief confession feels like part of a bigger turn toward owning her side of the story. I wouldn’t be shocked if we see more of this: deeper mental health conversations on podcasts, maybe a memoir, and more open talk about what it really felt like to hold a famous family together while her personal life cracked.
On a broader level, her comments tap into a real cultural shift. Cannabis is now legal in many states and often framed as wellness, not rebellion. Hearing a high-profile mom in her late 50s casually say she was a “major weed smoker” while also warning that she used it to dodge her feelings may push some fans to look at their own “plant medicine” habits a little more closely.
And for anyone sitting at home with their own version of a Mammie-sized loss and a marriage in freefall, Tish’s story lands as a messy reminder: what gets you through the worst year of your life isn’t always what helps you heal from it. Weed, wine, work – they’re tools, not cures. The fact that she ends this chapter talking about therapy, safety, and less drama instead of a new strain or a new vice is the quiet subtext here.
If you’re wrestling with anxiety or leaning hard on any substance just to “survive the year,” this is also your nudge to talk to a professional, not just your group chat.
So, when you hear Tish call her weed habit “self-medicating,” does it make her feel more relatable, more worrying, or a bit of both to you?
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