It’s no secret that Barack Obama used to be quite the smoker. While it’s been years since he quit, he previously shared that he picked up the habit when he was a teenager, and during particularly stressful periods in his life, he would almost polish off a whole pack in a single day. “Probably at my peak I was smoking seven or eight a day,” he told Men’s Health. “More typical was three. … There have been a couple of times during the campaign when I fell off the wagon and bummed one, and I had to kick it again.”
But it wasn’t just tobacco. Obama also dabbled in more illicit substances during his younger years. He admitted to smoking pot and even trying out cocaine in college, something he’s definitely not proud of. “Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it,” he wrote in his 1995 memoir. “Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man.”
And if you ask his friends, Obama wasn’t just a participant but a trend starter of sorts when it came to smoking. He introduced trends like “Total Absorption,” “Roof Hits,” and “Interception” to his friends. According to author David Maraniss in “Barack Obama: The Making of the Man.” Maraniss noted that way back when, Obama had a knack for getting more out of a joint. “When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted ‘Intercepted!,’ and took an extra hit,” he wrote.
