A LIFE IN A DAY: Craig Rose: Co-Founder & Chief Spiritual Creative: Spiritual Plants

In this edition of A LIFE IN A DAY, we catch up with Craig Rose, a founder and storyteller with a knack for walking straight into the conversations most people avoid—and in the pages that follow, he lets us in on the routines, questions, and small rituals that shape his days.

Craig Rose is a former celebrity pastor, professional line-crosser, internet problem, and accidental consciousness researcher. He has built a life walking directly into rooms everyone else was warned not to enter—asking the wrong questions out loud and surviving long enough to build companies around what he discovered. He doesn’t have a normal résumé. He has receipts, scars, and a healthy suspicion of authority, especially his own. Craig is the founder of XXXchurch.com, HeartSupport.com, Christian Cannabis, and now Spiritual Plants. He has spoken in front of more than one million people, traveled over three million miles, visited 22 countries, and spoken across 40+ U.S. states. His work and story have been the subject of multiple documentaries and major news coverage, including Saturday Night Live, GQ, Good Morning America, The New York Times (three times), The London Telegraph, Anderson Cooper, Time Magazine, Playboy, Howard Stern, and World News Tonight. He has published 20+ books and helped ignite cultural movements at the intersection of faith, media, and meaning.

In 2013, following the death of his father and two concussions that left him struggling with nervous system regulation, sleep, and emotional stability, Craig began exploring cannabis as a tool for grounding and recovery.

Craig became one of the first Christian pastors he knew to obtain a medical cannabis card in California—an experience that placed him at the intersection of faith, medicine, and cultural change long before those conversations were mainstream. Over the following years, he watched California transition from medical to recreational cannabis and engaged directly with early founders and builders shaping the modern industry, including teams behind Candescent and Papa & Barkley.

In 2018, Craig began articulating the idea that would later become Spiritual Plants—a vision for plant medicine rooted in ritual, restraint, and belief rather than hype or escalation. Those early conversations planted the seeds for what he and Guy Rocourt are building today: a platform designed to honor the plant with integrity while translating it responsibly across cultures and communities.

That inquiry deepened years later when Craig became the primary caretaker for his first wife during her battle with cervical cancer. Together, they chose a plant-based approach centered on Rick Simpson Oil (RSO) rather than traditional treatment. Craig was with her through every phase of care—an experience that reshaped his understanding of cannabis not as an industry, but as medicine embedded in relationship, ritual, and responsibility.

Out of those years emerged Rainbow Ridge, a retreat center founded by Craig and his family, dedicated to spiritual healing and plant-based practice. During the COVID lockdowns, the family gave up their life savings to host small, intimate Spiritual Plants retreats in Santa Cruz, California—creating space for guided psychedelic and plant-medicine experiences when most of the world was shut down. Their work became part of the broader cultural conversation around the resurgence of psychedelics, culminating in a feature story in The New York Times chronicling Craig’s family and their role in the rise of modern plant-medicine retreats.

For Craig, cannabis was never a trend or a talking point. It entered his life through grief, injury, caretaking, and devotion—and evolved into a lifelong exploration of how plants, when approached with intention and structure, can support healing beyond what language or institutions often allow.

A Life in A Day with Craig Rose

What’s your morning routine, and what do you think about in the mornings?

CR: I wake up and immediately assess whether my brain is online or if it’s still buffering. I cleanse myself first thing—body reboot—then I stare at the ceiling and decide whether today feels like a “save the world” day or a “don’t talk to anyone” day. I don’t think in the morning. Thinking is dangerous before 10am. I process. Sometimes I just lie there watching the light move across the wall, wondering if time is real or just a subscription model we forgot to cancel.

Also: chemtrails. I clock them. I don’t panic about them. I just like knowing who’s doing what in the sky above me before I engage with the ground-based simulation.

What’s the first thing you do each day, and what do you eat and drink in the morning?

CR: I smoke a joint. Then I make a smoothie. Then tea. Sometimes gluten-free toast if I feel like being responsible. Then I smoke another joint because the first one just got me into the room and the second one lets me sit down. Then I take Lion for a walk and let him smell every conspiracy on the sidewalk while I try not to solve the universe before breakfast.

Where do you live and what’s it like?

CR: I live wherever my nervous system calms down. Sometimes that’s near the ocean. Sometimes it’s the desert. Sometimes it’s a hotel room where nobody knows my name and I can order room service like a ghost. I need sky, light, and an exit plan. The last year I have spent time in Sedona, Tucson and currently living in Orange County.

What publications do you recommend in cannabis?

CR: I read everything and believe none of it fully. High Times, dispensary magazines, Twitter threads from people who just discovered weed yesterday. I read to see what people are lying to themselves about. That’s usually where the future is hiding.

How do you work and plan your day?

CR: I don’t plan my day. Planning implies control. I schedule loosely and respond intuitively. My job is translating chaos into coherence without becoming the cult leader. On paper I’m a founder. In practice, I’m a pattern recognizer with a tolerance for discomfort and an allergy to bullshit.

Do you exercise or meditate?

CR: Yes. Breathwork, Stillness, Sauna, Jacuzzi and Ice is my meditation. Pickleball is my sanctioned aggression. Heat and cold are how I remind my body I’m still alive. I don’t meditate to clear my mind—I meditate so my mind stops trying to hijack the room.

What do you wear?

CR: T-shirts, Glasses, Beanie and a sweatshirt or coat for evenings. Always T-shirts. If I’m wearing a logo, it’s because I trust the person who made it or it’s funny enough to offend the right people. I own suits for court, weddings, and ironic moments.

What’s lunch like and the rest of the day?

CR: I usually forget to eat, then remember sometime closer to dinner. I eat plants. I stopped eating meat because my body asked me to. Afternoons are calls, ideas, chiropractic adjustments, and explaining the same concept twelve different ways until someone finally gets it.

How does cannabis compare to your previous work?

CR: Cannabis is kinder than religion and more honest than most industries. It doesn’t pretend to save you. It just shows up and lets you sit with yourself. That’s dangerous in a good way.

Evenings?

CR: I slow everything down. Music, walking, water, steam. I don’t like driving at night because everyone’s energy feels scrambled and I already have enough frequencies in my head. If there is a concert nearby, you might find me there.

When do you consume?

CR: Morning. Afternoon. Night. I enjoy cannabis in my system. I started late since I was a DARE kid. I am making up for lost time. I enjoy edibles, blunts, any joint bigger that 1.5 grams and Volcano rips the most.

Bedtime routine and thoughts before sleep?

CR: I power down gently. I don’t review the day anymore—that used to keep me awake. Now I just let it pass. Sleep feels like the most sacred ritual left that nobody’s trying to monetize yet. I sleep at least 8 hours a night. Something happens in those hours beyond just REST.

Craig’s Final Thought

If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’re probably about to start a cult.
If you can’t rest, you’re probably running from something.
If you’re reading this, you’re already part of the experiment.

Highly Capitalized Network © 2026 All Rights Reserved. Highly Capitalized thanks Craig Rose for sharing his LIFE IN A DAY. Stay tuned to Highly Capitalized for more people, news, and perspectives in the cannabis and psychedelics industries.