Cockburn doesn’t have any acknowledged children, but if he did, he’d like to think that he wouldn’t give them drugs. Any normal parent that gave their kids drugs would end up with a social worker, or potentially prison time. But Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of Will, isn’t just any old mother.
Her son Jaden Smith recently let slip that his mom was the reason for their family’s psychedelic drug usage. “I think it was my mom, actually, that was really the first one to make that step for the family,” the rapper said at the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver this week, as reported by USA Today. He added, “It was just her for a really, really long time and then eventually it just trickled and evolved and everybody found it in their own ways.”
Jaden spoke about how using psychedelics has helped him form stronger relationships with his sister, Willow, and his half-brother, Trey, in a “profound” way.
“Siblings can argue so much and fight so much, and Lord knows me and my siblings have done so much of that in the past,” he said, adding, “It will actually help us to open up our minds to get out of the old ways of thinking that got us into lots of these arguments and open it up so that it just releases and makes room for you to work it out and massage it out until it’s completely gone.”
“But the level of love and empathy that I can feel for them inside of the [psychedelic] experiences and outside of the experiences has been something that’s profound and beautiful.”
Jada Pinkett Smith has previously admitted to using psychedelics on her Facebook show, Red Table Talk. “It’s not successful for everybody,” she said of therapy and prescription medication. “I struggled with depression for so long. And the thing about plant medicine is it helps you feel better but also solves the problems of how you got there in the first place.”
The revelation follows a string of Smith family scandals: Jada’s admission of an affair with her son Jaden’s best friend — which she then painstakingly discussed on Red Table Talk with her husband Will; Will Smith slapping Chris Rock on stage at last year’s Oscars after the comedian made a joke at Jada’s expense, and, worst of all, daughter Willow’s pop-punk career. Whatever next…?