One of Hollywood’s most famous moms is finally admitting how dark it really got. Tish Cyrus says she was “self-medicating” with weed as her nearly three-decade marriage to Billy Ray Cyrus collapsed and her beloved mother died, and she did not even realize she was doing it to survive.
The woman who helped hold together the Cyrus clan through the chaos of Miley’s superstardom now describes that chapter as “freaking rough,” a blur of grief, anxiety and smoke that only came into focus when she tried to quit.
Speaking on Tay Lautner’s mental health podcast “The Squeeze,” the 58-year-old opened up about using marijuana as “plant medicine” during the unraveling of her marriage and after the death of her mother, Loretta “Mamie” Finley, who died at 85 in 2020.
Her confession peels back the curtain on one of America’s most-watched families and shows how even the glamorous matriarch in the background can quietly fall apart.
Lighting Up to Numb the Pain
In the candid sit-down, Cyrus did not sugarcoat her relationship with marijuana. “I’ve been very open that I was a major weed smoker,” she told host Tay Lautner.
She explained that long before the divorce papers and funerals, anxiety had been a steady hum in her life. “I’ve always had a little bit of anxiety. I do think at that time, that was almost like medicine for me, because I’m a huge believer in plant medicine, and I think that I probably during the time I lost my mom and my marriage fell apart, that was like self-medicating in some ways, and I didn’t even realize that I was doing it for that reason.”
The weed worked, at least on the surface. “I do think it kinda numbed all that pain,” she shared, adding that when she first decided to stop smoking, she was “just in full-on anxiety to the point, [of] like, not functioning. And I did not know what was happening.”
Without the haze she had come to rely on, the full weight of what she had been running from crashed in. Anxiety stopped being a background buzz and became, as she describes it, a nearly paralyzing force.
Losing Mamie and a Marriage
Cyrus tied her heaviest smoking to two blows that reshaped her entire world. Her mother, Loretta Finley, whom daughter Miley Cyrus affectionately called “Mamie,” died at 85 in 2020.
“I was very close to my mom, and my kids were really close to my mom,” Tish said, recalling how deeply woven Mamie was into their everyday lives. “Once that was all over, we had got her a little house right beside ours. She was just a massive part of our lives.”
Mamie was not just nearby, she was in the middle of the Cyrus orbit. Tish shared that “her and Miley were very close. She’d go to the set with Miley and just my kids just worshiped her” before quietly revealing the brutal one-two punch that followed. “When she passed, not long after that, my marriage started falling apart.”
Looking back, Tish admits she did not give herself a chance to stop or feel any of it in real time. “I did not, like, process or even stop to really think,” she shared of what she calls her “freaking rough” year.
From ‘Hannah Montana’ Sets to Heartbreak
Mamie was there for the family’s most surreal chapter, when a teen Miley turned into a global phenomenon on Disney’s “Hannah Montana.” Tish remembers her mom living with them while Miley filmed the show, a grandmother quietly watching from the sidelines as her granddaughter became a pop culture obsession.
Later, after the Disney whirlwind cooled, the family got Mamie “a little house right beside” theirs. It was a cozy, literal picture of the tight-knit Southern clan fans imagined whenever they saw the Cyruses on a red carpet together.
Behind the scenes, though, fissures were forming. In April 2022, Tish filed for divorce from Billy Ray after 29 years of marriage. According to court documents, she cited “irreconcilable differences” and said she had not lived with the “Achy, Breaky Heart” singer since February 2020.
For fans who grew up with the country star dad, the rock manager mom and the Disney princess daughter, it was the quiet end of a long-running country fairy tale. For Tish, it was another loss landing just after the death of the woman who had anchored her entire adult life.
When the Weed Stopped Working
What Tish did not fully see at the time was how much she was leaning on weed to get through it all. She believed in “plant medicine” and told herself she was functioning. It was only when she tried to stop that she realized how fragile she really felt.
Once she quit, the anxiety roared in. She remembers being “just in full-on anxiety to the point, [of] like, not functioning” and said, “I did not know what was happening.” The calm she thought the weed had given her was replaced by waves of panic and confusion.
In the end, Tish credits therapy with helping her thread those moments together and make sense of them. “When I started therapy, and I really started talking about my life and moving out here and my kids in the business and, what my life had been, they were like, ‘Wow.'”
Talking it through forced her to revisit the early days of Miley’s career, the pressure of raising several children in the spotlight, the cross-country moves and the slow erosion of a marriage many assumed would last forever.
Dominic Purcell and a Different Kind of Safe
Out of that personal wreckage came something softer. Tish has since built what she calls a “beautiful relationship” with actor Dominic Purcell, whom she married in August 2023.
“It was so safe,” she told Lautner of their relationship, adding that there was “just no drama.” After years of turbulence, that calm felt radical. “I think it gave me this place to stand still and, like, feel all these feelings,” she said.
That new foundation did not magically wipe away the anxiety or the grief. “There was no less suffering for me,” she admitted. “I’m sure anyone that has experienced anxiety at that level, it is horrible. Absolutely horrible, and it lasted a long time. And I just now am really learning how to deal with it, and I’m so much better.”
She is clear about how far she had fallen. “Like, I was not functioning for that year, I was just trying to survive.”
From Survival to Feeling It All
For the millions who only ever saw Tish Cyrus in the periphery of their screens, beaming next to her superstar daughter or standing behind her country singer ex, her confession hits like a quiet thunderclap. While the world dissected the Cyrus family’s every headline, she was at home lighting up to get through another day she did not have the tools to process.
Now, instead of hiding behind a cloud of smoke or the manic pace of the entertainment machine, Tish is sitting in front of a microphone spelling out just how bad it got, and how much work it has taken to climb back. The weed is gone, the anxiety is still real, the grief for Mamie and the end of a 29-year marriage lingers, but she is finally talking about it instead of numbing it.
In a family known for reinvention, the most surprising turn might be this quieter one. For the Cyrus matriarch, the plot twist is not a new single or a new scandal, it is giving herself permission to feel everything she once tried to smoke away.
