Dennis Quaid has opened up about his past struggle with cocaine addiction that spanned more than a decade.
For Newsweek’s regular feature, “My Favorite Mistake,” the former star of “The Right Stuff,” “The Big Easy” and “The Parent Trap” revealed details about his past drug use, noting that it started in the mid-1970s.
“It was very casual at first. That’s what people were doing when they were at parties. Cocaine was even in the budgets of movies, thinly disguised,” Dennis revealed in the self-penned essay. “It was petty cash, you know? It was supplied, basically, on movie sets because everyone was doing it…. Instead of having a cocktail, you’d have a line.”
The actor said one of the reasons he turned to drug use was to handle the transition from Houston boy to Hollywood superstar.
“All of a sudden this success starts happening to you, I just didn’t know how to handle that,” he said. “Doing blow just contributed to me not being able to handle the fame, which, at the time, I guess I felt I didn’t deserve.”
Dennis admitted to sleeping just an hour each night and snorting lines each day. Eventually, it all came to a head.
“I 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,” he said in the piece. “The next day I was in rehab.”
Like many addicts, however, Dennis said things actually “got worse” for a while, but he was able to put his life back together during the ‘90s, recovery time that he said “chiseled me into a person.”
“It gave me the resolve and a resilience to persevere in life,” he added.
Dennis actually opened up about his past drug use in 2002 with Access Hollywood as he talked about his role in “Far From Heaven.”
“My character is basically, he’s living a life of shame, he has a secret life — when you’re living a secret life you’re in a lot of shame. I drew on my own experiences when I was addicted to cocaine, back several, several years ago,” he told Access at the time. “The whole thing of sneaking around and hiding it, and being an authentic person and living an authentic life and I think that’s really what the movie is about too, the importance of living an authentic life.”
To read more of Dennis’ piece from Newsweek, Click HERE.
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