Weed has been a big part of Kevin Smith's life for a good while now, and according to the man himself it might just be responsible for saving his life.

The director of Clerks had been filming his stand-up show Silent But Deadly in late February when he started to feel a bit odd, but he put it down to the hefty amount of weed he'd already smoked that day.

“I honestly thought I was too high," he told Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. "I’d smoked a bunch of weed that day because I was doing the show, and then I smoked a joint right before the show, and then I got off stage and all of a sudden I had a heart attack.

"They got me to the hospital and they wheel me into the emergency room and the whole time I’m chill. Like, the guy said, the paramedic, he goes, 'You’re being real calm, that’s going to get you through this.

"And there’s a dude behind him goes, 'That’s what’s going to save his life.'

"I said, 'Doc, honestly, I just smoked too much weed this morning. That’s what this is.

"He goes, ‘No, quite the opposite. That weed saved your life.'

"And I was like, 'Do tell! Like, what do you mean?’ He said, 'You kept calm. They told you that you were having a massive heart attack, and you remained calm the whole time, so that joint saved your life.'"

It's probably not a medical procedure we're likely to see on Grey's Anatomy any time soon ("We're losing him - GET THIS MAN A FAT DOOB, STAT"), but it's good to know weed has Kevin Smith's back.