Reba McEntire Once Got Way Too High With Her Mom

Most fans already know that Reba McEntire was very close to her mom, Jacqueline, and that she helped take care of her mother during the final stages of her battle with bladder cancer before Jacqueline’s death in 2020.

It was a difficult time in the singer’s life. But with every tragedy comes a little comedy, and for McEntire, that came in the form of an especially potent gummy that knocked her out so effectively, she spent the night pretty useless as a caretaker.

McEntire shared the story during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, explaining that she came home to Oklahoma at one point to give her siblings a break from caretaking duties. She was with her mom around the clock during that time, even sleeping in the same bed with her.

Her sister Alice had given her the lowdown on Jacqueline’s pain management regimen, which seemed to include an as-needed dose of medical marijuana gummies.

“I said, ‘The whole thing?’ She said, ‘Yeah, the whole thing,'” McEntire recounts. “Well, I wasn’t really comfortable with that, when we started going to bed, I said, ‘Mom, let’s get ahead of this pain. I’m gonna give you half of this.’

“…She just went to sleep, and I thought, ‘Well shoot, Mama’s taking it. I need to see what she’s experiencing,'” the singer continues. So, she popped the other half of the gummy and laid down for bed.

McEntire doesn’t have much of a tolerance when it comes to THC gummies. She told Fallon that she’s tried them “maybe one time,” but she thinks that the gummy she’d taken in the past only had about two milligrams of THC in it. So, this time around, even half a gummy had a very strong effect. When she woke up to help her mother use the portable toilet by the bed, she quickly discovered a problem.

“I threw back the covers and that’s about as far as I got,” she deadpans.

She knew she had to help her mother, so she slowly managed to edge herself around the bed — a big effort, but McEntire was trying to hide how much she was struggling, especially because Jacqueline seemed to be handling the gummy’s effects just fine.

“She said, ‘Can you get me some more ice water?'” McEntire continues, with a hilariously bewildered look to the audience.

“You know how you can fast-forward on something real quick? ‘Reba McEntire Found in Her Mother’s Kitchen, Ice All Around,'” she says, imagining the headlines that this scenario could potentially produce. She quickly decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

“I just turned back to mom and I said, ‘Here you go.’ And she took a sip and she went, ‘Yuck. Where’s the ice?’ I said, ‘We’re out,'” she adds.

“Horrible. So, I got her back in bed — or, she got herself back in bed — and…I crawled over, and I laid down, and I swear, there was weeds and flowers growing out of my head,” she concludes. The next day, McEntire asked her sister exactly how much THC was in the gummies — and it turned out they contained 50 milligrams, meaning that she took a 25-milligram dose that night — more than 10 times over what she’d ever experienced before.

Read More: Why Reba McEntire Nearly Quit Music When Her Mom Died

All jokes aside, McEntire has been open about the devastating impact of her mom’s death, especially since it was Jacqueline’s influence that gave her the inspiration to pursue music in the first place.

McEntire subsequently shared a song called “Seven Minutes in Heaven,” which — along with a personal, tear-jerking music video — addresses her grief in the wake of losing her mother.