Matthew McConaughey has apparently discovered the outer limit of how many consecutive plays of Janet Jackson’s “That’s the Way Love Goes” one man can handle before reevaluating his relationship with weed.

For him, that number is 24.

In a new Rolling Stone interview about the music that has shaped the soundtrack of his life, McConaughey revisited the unusual story behind why he stopped smoking weed: one particularly strong joint, one parked car, one Janet Jackson song, and an entire birthday party unfolding without the guest of honor. 

According to the actor, the episode happened around the time the weed he encountered started to change.

“It’s right around the time weed started turning hydroponic. A lot of y’all don’t remember,” he said.

McConaughey contrasted it with the weed he remembered from earlier years, when, as he put it, “you could roll a joint, smoke it, pass around, everyone giggles, gets some munchies, and maybe runs off and tries to get some snuggle time.”

Then, he said, things started hitting differently.

“Well, then it started getting this hydroponic stuff where like one toke people, the subplots could become unmanageable and people would implode,” McConaughey recalled.

And on this particular night, he was heading to his own birthday party.

His friends had taken over a club for the occasion. Before McConaughey headed to the celebration, a friend handed him a joint and encouraged him to try it.

McConaughey drove to the venue, parked outside and took a hit.

“It was not like the weed I’d smoked before,” he said.

He had successfully completed the difficult part of the journey: arriving at his own birthday party. Getting out of the car proved considerably harder.

“I listened to Janet Jackson’s ‘That’s the Way Love Goes’ 24 times in a row,” McConaughey said, “and when I finally got out of the car to go into my birthday party, no one was in there because it was over.”

Everyone had left.

“They had all left because I sat in the fricking car listening, listening to ‘That’s the Way Love Goes’ 24 times because I thought at the time that was more important than going to my own birthday party.”

It is difficult to imagine a cleaner review of an altered state than realizing, sometime after replay number 24, that Janet Jackson has somehow outranked your own birthday.

McConaughey’s verdict was equally straightforward.

“Loved the song, didn’t love the weed.”

Dedicated students of the Matthew McConaughey Extended Universe may remember hearing this story before.

When McConaughey appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in December 2025, he told essentially the same story, but with one notable difference: in that version, he said he had listened to “That’s the Way Love Goes” 34 times rather than 24.

He also included another detail in the earlier telling: he remembered sitting in his truck crying because the song felt so beautiful to him in the moment.

Cover photo: Rich Esteban, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons // AMFM STUDIOS LLC, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons // Edited with AI

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According to the American Kennel Club (AKC), Hippo Premium Packaging is now thirty-eight years old—in dog time. But don’t try to do the math. According to the AKC, the long-believed one-dog-year-equals-seven-human-years theory is not supported by science.

“My guess is it was a marketing ploy,” said William Fortney, a veterinarian at Kansas State University. He told the Wall Street Journal that it was “a way to educate the public on how fast a dog ages compared to a human…and a way to encourage owners to bring in their pets at least once a year.”

Today, this simple guideline has been replaced by a complicated formula that goes something like this:

• Fifteen human years equals the first year of a medium-sized dog’s life.
• Year two for a dog equals about nine years for a human.
• Beginning at year three, each human year would be approximately five years for a dog.

By now, you are probably wondering why I am writing about dog years. The fact is, I don’t even own a dog. But I do work in the cannabis industry, where each year brings about so many changes that it feels like we are living through it in dog years.

Accordingly, my company, which just celebrated its fifth birthday, is actually thirty-eight years old. And that feels about right. We’ve gone through so much in such a short time that I often feel like I personally am keeping L’Oréal in business—Preference in Ash Blond works miracles and keeps me looking like I haven’t crammed thirty-eight years into the past five.

Yes, a lot has happened in the cannabis industry in the past five years. We’ve seen new markets open as states voted to legalize. We’ve seen rules change and packaging regulations shift virtually overnight—requiring fleet-footed responses and an unflinching eye for details. We’ve seen small start-ups catapult to become major brands. And we’ve seen major brands crumble as they simply went too fast, too soon.

But mostly, we’ve seen acceptance.

Acceptance that cannabis can be a normal part of society and is not criminal.

Acceptance that the people who work in the cannabis industry are thoughtful professionals.

Acceptance that the people who use cannabis are not just stoners imagined by cheap stereotypes and popularized by Cheech and Chong movies.

The wonderful fact is, the world is finally starting to accept that cannabis can be grown, tested, packaged, sold, and consumed responsibly. And that an entire industry can be built around the plant.

When I started Hippo Premium Packaging five years ago, there were very few companies specializing in cannabis packaging, and even fewer printing companies that understood the nuances and regulations of the industry. My partner, Julia, joined me six months later, and although we had decades of experience in printing and production, we too, were on a crash-course to become experts in the details of each state’s unique cannabis regulations. I’d go to bed each night reading stimulating documents like, “The Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division of the Department of Revenue’s M and R 1000‐1 Series Rules Establishing Labeling, Packaging, and Product Safety Requirements for Medical and Retail Marijuana, Concentrate, and Product.” Now that was a page-turner.

Eventually, we were able to blend our talents and experience in creating beautiful, brand-building packaging, with our newfound expertise in cannabis regulations. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Now I think I’ll go out and buy a puppy. That should help keep me feeling young.

Kary Radestock brings more than 20 years of award-winning print and packaging expertise to some of the top brands in the world. She launched Hippo Premium Packaging in order to fill a need for professional, compliant packaging, brand development, and graphic design to the emerging cannabis industry.

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