Jason Momoa Details Time He Almost Died Surfing in Maui

The scary experience shook Momoa of his smoking habit.

Jason Momoa is opening up about the time he nearly died — and how it inspired him to finally quit smoking.

The topic came up while the Aquaman actor appeared on Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes’ Smartless podcast this week, after Momoa casually mentioned he almost drowned once while surfing in Maui.

“Wait, so tell me, when yo’re in that position of almost drowning … you know it’s happening. Do you have a protocol of what to do in that moment? Are you even thinking clearly enough to know how to save yourself?” Hayes wondered.

“Yeah, I was trained pretty well, so it was fine. I took quite a few on the head. They were pretty big, like 10-foot Hawaiian waves, but I’m literally probably a mile, at that point, off shore,” Momoa replied. “It’s actually, this place is called S–tf–ks, because there’s all this water that pulls out … and you just get hit with these waves. So I was stuck in this crazy spot, which is probably the outer reef, and unknown to me, I was really on the outer reef, and they couldn’t see me, and I had my paddle and I was waving it, and they couldn’t see me.”

He said the waves were so big at the time they “took my f–ing shorts off,” explaining he got emotional when he thought about his family. “My daughter at that time was three months old and I lost it,” he recalled, before sharing how he was rescued.

“I couldn’t see anyone coming to get me and I couldn’t move anymore and my arms and my legs gave up after I was out there for a while,” he continued.

“I had already given up, my body stopped, I couldn’t move my arm anymore and I bubbled down and my toe hit the outer reef. I literally gave up and I’m screaming inside and my foot just hits the outer reef, and I don’t know if it was a f–king whale or it could be one rock, but I just reached down, grabbed it, I jump up, I get hit by another wave,” Momoa shared. “I dig my feet into the coral, and I’m literally in the middle of the ocean, and I’m just, I could barely put my lips above, just to breathe and get a break, but I had already given up.”

“So it’s like, you’ve already given up and died and have a second chance at it,” he added, saying he was still out there for another 10 minutes before Laird Hamilton — who he was surfing with — helped take him to safety. “It is brutal getting out of this spot,” he recalled, saying his feet were “covered in blood.”

“I used to smoke. I used to smoke 2-3 packs a day,” said Momoa at the end of the story. “I couldn’t stop for my kids, I couldn’t stop for my ex, I couldn’t stop smoking. The moment I came out, I never smoked again. I just died. I couldn’t do it again, I gave up, I gave up my life.”

Momoa is dad to son Nakoa-Wolf, 16, and daughter Lola, now 18, who he shares with ex Lisa Bonet.