Dennis Quaid has said that when he first arrived in Hollywood, Cocaine was factored into movie budgets.
“Cocaine was even in the budgets of movies, thinly disguised,” he said. “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.”
“So it was insidious, the way it snuck up on everybody. Coming from where I came from – lower-middle-class life, from Houston into Hollywood – and all of a sudden this success starts happening to you, I just didn’t know how to handle that. 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.”
Quaid also admitted that getting addicted was a big mistake, and thing got out of control for him pretty quickly: “I was a mess. I was getting an hour of sleep 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. 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.”
