Q&A: Melissa Etheridge Calls Canadians Smart

By Karen Bliss

“How can we put more meaning into life?," Melissa Etheridge asks at one point during her interview with Samaritanmag. She’s discussing the domino effect she believes can happen after taking control of our own health and leading more positive lives.

The Grammy and Oscar-winning singer-songwriter — known for such hits as Bring Me Some Water, No Souvenirs, Like The Way I Do, I’m the Only One and Come to My Window — has just released her 14^th album, The Medicine Show. The songs touch on a range of topics — gun control, kindness, anxiety, plant medicine, #MeToo, activism, the opioid crisis – but as a whole, it boils down to health and wellness.

In this interview, the 58-year-old musician refers to the way traditional doctors treat pain as “careless.” She is a long-time advocate of plant medicine, dating back to her diagnosis of breast cancer in 2004, which she successfully treated with a lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiation, and began relieving some of the resulting symptoms, like pain and loss of appetite. with medical marijuana.

Marijuana is now legal in California, where she resides, and she has launched Etheridge Farms to develop and sell cannabis-based products from cookies to creams.

While Etheridge says she doesn’t consider herself an expert “on anything,” — she prefers to “inspire” — she has strong views she doesn’t hesitate to share (in the past some of her comments about, for example, diet’s effect on cancer or not recommending genetic testing have come under fire from the medical community). In this chat with Samaritanmag about the new album, The Medicine Show, she is characteristically forthright. – Read Karen Bliss’s feature interview on the Samaritanmag website