Destroy Lonely on How He Gets in the Zone Before a Show: 'Smoke Like a Hundred Cigarettes and Sleep'

Destroy Lonely says he smokes “like a hundred cigarettes” and gets in some sleep as part of his show preparation process. To be clear, the Opium artist made this remark with a laugh in a recent interview, though its subsequent aggregation across X and elsewhere has some fans recalling past heavy cigarette usage remarks from DL's fellow Rolling Loud alum Post Malone.

Speaking with Clash for an interview published earlier this week, Lone, who just last month teased that </3 ³ may be on the horizon, was asked about the unique challenges of bringing his characteristically high-energy live sets to larger and larger crowds as his star continues to rise, ultimately leading to a question about what he does to put himself in the “mode” required for tackling any given stage.

“I smoke like a hundred cigarettes and sleep,” Lone said, with interviewer Chris Saunders noting that he laughed when saying this.

For what it's worth, smoking 100 cigarettes, either before a performance or otherwise, falls very much within the scope of definitely not being a very good idea at all. Still, a cigarette between two fingers has become a key part of the larger Opium aesthetic, often calling to mind a number of key “cigfluencers” from across multiple eras of pop culture.

Back in 2022, Post Malone made headlines after detailing his own cig frequency in an interview on the Full Send podcast. At the time, Posty, who will perform at Coachella this weekend, pointed to the late Johnny Cash as someone who “sounded cool” despite having smoked extensively.