Dennis Quaid: Cocaine Was Part of Movie Budgets

Actor recalls what it was like to be addicted
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 11, 2011 9:49 AM CDT
Dennis Quaid: Cocaine Was Part of Movie Budgets
In this May 19, 2010 file photo, actor Dennis Quaid arrives at the premiere of the film "The Special Relationship" in Los Angeles.   (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, file)

In Newsweek, Dennis Quaid recalls his "greatest mistake": the cocaine-fueled days of his youth. "It was very casual at first. That’s what people were doing when they were at parties," he writes of the '70s and '80s. "Cocaine was even in the budgets of movies, thinly disguised. It was petty cash, you know? It was supplied, basically, on movie sets because everyone was doing it. People would make deals. Instead of having a cocktail, you’d have a line."

As a result, "I was doing my best imitation of an asshole there for a little while, trying to pretend everything was OK." By the late '80s, he was "a mess," he continues, and sleeping all of an hour a night. "I had a reputation for being a 'bad boy,'which seemed like a good thing, but basically I just had my head stuck up my ass." That all changed when he "had one of those white-light experiences that night where I kind of realized I was going to be dead in five years if I didn’t change my ways." The next day he entered rehab. Click for more revelations. (More Dennis Quaid stories.)

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