What Are Marijuana Users Listening to When They Are High?

There is no denying that marijuana and music go hand in hand. Anyone who has ever gotten lost for hours listening to their favorite records after an ambitious night with a bong will tell you that the sonic drippings coming from the speakers are just more sacred, vibrant and almost three-dimensional (like they have a secret to tell) when complemented with a mind full of Maui Wowie.

For those who haven’t yet had the pleasure of this mind-bending experience, you should drop everything this very second, step into the right headspace and get your face melted off by some of your favorite tunes.

We’ll wait.

Seriously, music just has a way of coming alive under the influence of cannabis that it struggles to achieve any other time. It is almost as if the two were designed to share a certain wavelength back when the masters of the universe were constructing the world that we now call home. If we could just hone this simple process, chances are all of the worldly problems would cease to exist.

Or maybe not.

When it comes to music, however, cannabis users are often believed to listen almost exclusively to only a select few musical genres.

Maybe it’s because weed started gaining notoriety with the flower power children of the 1960s and was the focal point of the early days of the War on Drugs, but more often than not, cannabis is directly associated with the sounds of Bob Marley, the Grateful Dead and other hippy-dippy offerings that found an audience back when the underlings of America started to rise up against the system.

It hasn’t helped matters that most of the cannabis festivals today continue to perpetuate the clichés that they swear they are working to abolish. The presence of tie-dyed clothing, dreds and the present-day musical manifestations of the high heritage do very little to advance the scene beyond the stoner stereotype. A new study, however, suggests that maybe the time has come for the stoned to diversify.

Researchers from the marketing firm Ipsos recently got together with Pax Labs to learn more about the latest cannabis trends. You know the drill: Marijuana companies are eager to learn more about cannabis users so they can formulate the best plan of attack when selling them their products. So they hire a team of pseudo scientists to roll up their sleeves and dig deep into the mind of the cannabis consumer in hopes of devising just the right scheme to drive higher profits.

The most intriguing highlight to come from this examination into the high life was the musical interest of those who make weed a part of their daily lives. Come to find out most pot consumers are not at all inspired by Jamaican rhythms when it is time to get high. The majority of the marijuana users from the U.S. and Canada are not just music fans, they are rockers, through and through.

For starters, the study finds that music is a large part of the cannabis culture. No matter what their musical preference, 48% of the respondents said that music was just part of the deal while they are smoking weed. The other 52% are apparently sitting in silence and reconsidering everything.

But where the survey takes a turn for the surprising is when it gets into the musical genres that these people have a tendency to gravitate toward.

A hefty 50% reported listening to classic rock (The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath) while they are using cannabis, followed by hip hop and rap at 39% and pop music at 36%. Just a smidge down the line, 32% of cannabis users are checking out alternative/indie rock and R&B/soul. Contrary to popular opinion, though, it turns out that reggae isn’t the most sought after sound of the average cannabis user. Not even close. Only 25% said reggae was their music of choice when getting ripped on the reefer. In fact, people who use marijuana are just as likely to listen to hard rock or metal (25%), country (22%) and blues (20%) than anything associated with reggae.

Researchers also found that somewhere between 3 and 5% of the cannabis-using population is out there getting wrecked on weed and turning up Broadway musicals and gospel music. Admittedly, we’ve never tried listening to these particular genres while under the influence of weed. But we’re starting to think that stoned musicals might be a trip. Just as long as “Cats” isn’t one of them.

TELL US, what type of music do you listen to when enjoying cannabis?