John Lennon wore contact lenses that kept falling out. Then he smoked weed and the rest is history

When you think of John Lennon of the Beatles, you probably imagine him with his round, wire-rimmed glasses.

But sometimes he wore contact lenses, or at least he tried to. They kept falling out of his eyes.

Why and what Lennon did to make his contact lenses stay in place is part history, part vision science.

As I explain in my article, smoking large amounts of marijuana was also involved.

Lennon did not like wearing glasses

Before 1967, Lennon was rarely seen wearing glasses in public. His aversion to them began in childhood, when he was discovered to be short-sighted at around the age of seven.

Nigel Walley was Lennon’s childhood friend and manager of the Quarrymen, the predecessor of the Beatles. Walley told the BBC:

He was blind as a bat. He had glasses, but he never wore them. He was very vain about that.

In 1980, Lennon told Rolling Stone magazine:

I spent my entire childhood without glasses because glasses are considered effeminate.

Even during extensive tours during Beatlemania (1963–1966), Lennon never wore glasses during live performances, unlike his hero Buddy Holly.

Then Lennon tried contacts… Ping!

Roy Orbison’s guitarist Bobby Goldsboro introduced Lennon to contact lenses in 1963.

But Lennon’s contact lens experiment lasted relatively short. They kept falling out – for example while filming a comedy sketch, on stage (when a fan threw a gummy bear onto the stage and it hit him in the eye) and in the swimming pool.

Why? This is probably due to the lenses available at the time and the shape of Lennon’s eyes.

The soft, flexible contact lenses that millions of people wear today were not commercially available until 1971. In the 1960s, there were only inflexible (hard) contact lenses, of which there were two types.

Large “scleral lenses” rested on the white of the eye (the sclera). They were partially covered by the eyelids and rarely came loose.

However, smaller “corneal” lenses rested on the front of the cornea (the outermost clear layer of the eye). These lenses were more prone to dislodging, and Lennon probably wore them.

Why did Lennon’s contact lenses fall out regularly? According to the glasses he wore in 1971, Lennon was not only short-sighted but also suffered from moderate astigmatism.

Astigmatism is an irregularity in the curvature of the cornea, which in Lennon’s case resembles the curvature of a rugby ball lying on its side. And it was Lennon’s astigmatism that most likely caused him to lose his contact lenses so often.

At that time, manufacturers did not typically modify the back of contact lenses to accommodate the shape of an astigmatistic cornea.

So, when a conventional hard lens is placed on a cornea like Lennon’s, the lens is unstable and will slide down when someone lifts their upper eyelid, at which point it can pop out of the eye.

What does grass have to do with it?

Lennon realized he could do something to keep his contact lenses. In an interview with his optician, Lennon said:

I tried wearing them, but the only way to keep them in my damn eyes was to get damn stoned first.

So how could smoking weed help with his contact lenses?

This likely caused his upper eyelids to droop (known as ptosis). We don’t know exactly how cannabis relates to eyelid position, but several animal studies have reported cannabis-induced ptosis. Cannabis may decrease the function of the levator palpebrae superioris, the muscle that lifts the upper eyelid.

While Lennon was stoned, his lowered eyelids would have helped keep the top of the lens in place.

Lennon wore contact lenses from late 1963 to late 1966, which coincided with the peak of The Beatles’ cannabis use. For example, Lennon refers to their 1965 album “Rubber Soul” as “the pot album.”

Back to Glasses

Ultimately, the ill-fitting contact lenses led Lennon to stop wearing them in 1967 and start wearing glasses in public.

His frustrating experiences with contact lenses may have played a role in the creation of his iconic eyewear look, which is still instantly recognizable more than half a century later.