Drake Got Lit Before Auditioning For Degrassi, But Curiosity Almost Killed The Cat When Paranoia Made Him Feel Like He “Just Completely Ruined” His Life

Article by Angela Stelmakowich, Growth Op

Multiple Grammy winner and Degrassi alumni Drake is no stranger to pot: He has said he partakes in moderation and thought weed was a solid enough business venture that he teamed up with Canopy Growth to form More Life Growth Company.

But did Drake smoke weed, at age 14, before auditioning for Degrassi: The Next Generation? Guilty as charged, he said in a 2014 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Before Drake was Drake, he was Aubrey Graham, a teen actor auditioning for a chance to play “Jimmy Brooks” on the reboot of Degrassi.

“It was like a real pivotal day in my life because it was the first audition I went on, so that’s already a monumental thing,” he told Fallon.

Pivotal for that, of course, but also because it was the day that he finally got accepted by “these really cool Jewish kids at school,” chalking up his first invite to Daniel Pearlman’s house, Drake relayed to Fallon.

Once there, Drake said he did something for the first time ever — that something starting “with a ‘W’ and ends with ‘eed’,” and using a device that “starts with a ‘B’ and ends with a ‘ong’” for his reportedly maiden voyage.

But his initial trepidation about smoking bud was transformed into paranoia. “I thought I’d just completely ruined my life,” he said in the interview. “I started splashing water on my face constantly, like it was like a Clearasil commercial!”

By the time he got to the audition, those feelings had eased somewhat. “I went in and did what I could and was just, like, devastated. I couldn’t tell my mom.”

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