Malala Yousafzai Was in Someone's RealLife Bong Rotation and That's the Best Fun Fact I've Heard All Week Stephanie SengweOctober 26, 2025 at 4:30 AM 0 Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty Malala Yousafzai Malala Yousafzai has been promoting her new book, Finding My Way, which is comprised of stories about th...
- - Malala Yousafzai Was in Someone's Real-Life Bong Rotation and That's the Best Fun Fact I've Heard All Week
Stephanie SengweOctober 26, 2025 at 4:30 AM
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Malala Yousafzai -
Malala Yousafzai has been promoting her new book, Finding My Way, which is comprised of stories about the misadventures her college years
While on several talk shows, the noted activist spilled the beans about the time she had a bad reaction to a bong
Finding My Way is available in stores right now
The story of Malala Yousafzai is one that shocked the international community back in 2012. At age 15, she was shot in the face by the Taliban for advocating for girls' education in her home country of Pakistan. She later moved to the U.K., where she sought treatment and started a new life.
From 2017 to 2020, the Nobel Peace Prize winner attended Oxford University, studying philosophy, politics and economics. From the outside looking in, it seemed to me like she was living the extraordinary life of a worldwide hero.
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Sure, this horrific event had happened to her, but it was because she is an astonishingly brave person who vibrates on a frequency above all of us. And now that she was in the U.K., she was attending one of the most elite institutions in the world, as only a person of her caliber should. I admired her for her bravery, of course, but she felt like a mythical figure, someone whose life experiences would never match mine.
Atria Books
Finding My Way by Malala Yousafzai
In my head, she sat around with her elite group of friends in the fancy Oxford libraries, talking about world policy, picking apart Nietzsche and Descartes' philosophies with ease and making grand plans to make the world a better place. (She did start the Malala Fund and also opened a school in her hometown of Shangla, so I wasn't too far off.)
Her new book, Finding My Way, however, proves that she's not actually so different from the rest of us. Case in point: The story she shared about once joining in on a bong rotation while at Oxford. It didn't go well, but just the fact that Malala Yousafzai was invited to be part of a bong rotation in college changed my entire view about what life as Malala is actually like.
Of course, for Malala, a bad trip is much worse than one pretty much anyone else might experience. Speaking to Gayle King about the incident, she stated, "I had this horrible experience at college. It was a normal night were trying bong and I saw it for the first time and I tried bong and suddenly, as soon as it entered my body, it took a sharp turn. I froze in that moment, and I was reliving the Taliban attacks [in] flashbacks."
The experience led her to therapy as she revealed she hadn't factored in getting help with her mental health as part of her healing process from the 2012 incident.
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Malala Yousafzai
And while the anecdote is certainly dark, I think it's actually kind of inspirational that a real-life, very relatable, very typical college experience led her to work on her mental health. Few of us have such a difficult history to access, but as a girl who once took a $150 Uber from New York's Penn Station to Long Island while tripping off a bad hit, I feel like she and I have a lot to talk about.
Even more impressive for me is the fact that she was able to tell the story herself. In the age of social media, privacy is hard to come by, even for normal people. The fact that her friends let her be herself without blowing up her social life on TikTok until she was ready to tell her own story says volumes. Despite the understandable desire to have the best possible entry in "Two Truths and a Lie," none of them leaked the story, no one started an anonymous blog, and no one spilled the beans. Everyone respected her experience, and now she gets to share the bits of it she wants to, on her terms.
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A post shared by Malala Yousafzai (@malala)
While on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, she spoke about how the book is sort of a reintroduction of herself to the world. Beyond being the girl with the powerful, unbelievable story, she's also ... just a girl.
"The first thing I want to tell people is my age. I'm 28," she said, joking, "I still see some kids on social media commenting that they thought that I was a figure from the 18th century, or that I was dead. I also meet people who are shocked that I'm not 15 years old anymore."
Not only that, but she's also more than an activist; she's also a girl who enjoys partaking in silly TikTok trends, and she's been hitting all the marks on that front.
Her skit with Zarna Garg, in particular, is hilarious to watch as it also pokes fun at all the difficulty she's overcome. (It's been over a decade and it's her story, she can do that.)
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She also jumped on the "Beez in the Trap/What's Up" trend with Fallon and has done a version of the "Throwing a 'Fit" trend, too.
I feel like the brilliance of Finding My Way is that it opens the space to humanize her. At a time when authenticity is the best currency, I frankly can't really relate to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning version of Malala — almost no one has the capacity to make an impact on that level, and it can feel a little intimidating to even consider trying.
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However, the girl who steals pens, is a fan of Cardi B and John Cena, who partied so hard in college that her college advisor had to have a chat with her? She's my jam. I feel like I can talk to her about all the silly stuff, but also lock in and get some serious work done when it's time.
The coolest part? This all ties to her life's mission of making sure all girls get higher education. The college years, for many of us, were the time in our lives when we began asking the big questions and searching for purpose. It's inspiring in its own way that Malala's time letting loose in college led her to do the same.
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