Promoting Soul Surfer, Dennis Quaid penned an essay for this week’s Newsweek regarding his former cocaine addiction. In case you were wondering, he began snorting cocaine when he moved to L.A. in 1974, because “that’s what people did at parties.†In fact, “Cocaine was even in the budgets of movies, thinly disguised,†he writes. “Instead of having a cocktail, you’d have a line.†But then the actor, by his own account, became a total jerk:
“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. I’d wake up, snort a line, and swear I wasn’t going to do it again that day. But then 4 o’clock rolled around, and I’d be right back down the same road like a little squirrel on one of those treadmills.â€
Don’t worry: After Quaid’s band, the Eclectics, broke up, the actor realized he needed to change his ways and go to rehab. After which, “It got worse!†In any case, his struggle throughout the nineties to get clean chiseled him into the man he is today, he says. Of course, Quaid is merely reaffirming the old adage: All the celebrities you think are doing cocaine probably are. In the end, the previously drug-addled movie star concludes that “humility†comes after two and a half decades of questionable behavior. Take what you will from that.
My Favorite Mistake [Newsweek]