Country outlaw legend Willie Nelson inhales deep on his love for cannabis in a new Rolling Stone cover interview.

The Red Headed Stranger appears on the May 2019 cover of the music and cultural magazine, an issue dedicated to marijuana.

In a 4,000-word profile that takes readers to Nelson’s Texas-based Luck Ranch, the “Whiskey River” singer shared that he smoked his first joint in 1954, an introduction to the drug that he “wouldn’t be alive without.”

“… It saved my life, really," Nelson told Rolling Stone. "I wouldn’t have lived 85 years if I’d have kept drinking and smoking like I was when I was 30, 40 years old. I think that weed kept me from wanting to kill people. And probably kept a lot of people from wanting to kill me, too — out there drunk, running around.”

The story goes inside Nelson’s famed history with marijuana. It provides a day-to-day look at his cannabis company — Willie’s Reserves (where Nelson’s the “CTO: chief tasting officer,” the story notes), outlines moments when the drug landed Nelson in legal trouble and shares a tale of Nelson smoking at the White House during the President Jimmy Carter administration.

“Chip Carter took me down into the bottom of the White House, where the bowling alley is,” Nelson says. Then they went up to the roof and smoked a joint. Nelson remembers Carter explaining the surrounding view — the Washington Monument, the string of lights on Pennsylvania Avenue. “It’s really pretty nice up there,” Nelson says.”

Nelson celebrated his 86th birthday earlier this week and last month detailed plans for a new studio album, “Ride Me Back Home.” The release drops June 21; stream the title track below.