Ben Affleck is sharing his experience of smoking weed on the set of "Dazed and Confused." The actor recently released his book, "Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused," in which he discusses his time filming the 1993 comedy.
Affleck was 20 and had a small role in the film. His castmates, including Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, and Milla Jovovich, were regularly getting high and he did not want to be the odd one out. However, Affleck did not want to get stoned either, so he did what former President Bill Clinton once said he did — he "didn't inhale."
"I had a bad experience with marijuana at 15. I had a dissociative panic attack," Affleck wrote, according to Vanity Fair in a report published Wednesday. "So, I only smoked weed if everyone else was smoking, and I had to sort of 'Bill Clinton' it and fake it. I didn't really like marijuana."
Affleck revealed that his castmates would also often get drunk but he "wasn't a very heavy drinker." He later became an alcoholic but at the time said he felt uneasy with their partying habits.
"I was a little nervous, like should we be drinking before we're working tomorrow? Some people were actually drinking and stoned at work," he recalled.
Affleck has been in and out of rehab since 2001. He has been vocal about his alcoholism and last year opened up about his struggles in an interview with The New York Times.
"You're trying to make yourself feel better with eating or drinking or sex or gambling or shopping or whatever," Affleck said. "But that ends up making your life worse. Then you do more of it to make that discomfort go away. Then the real pain starts. It becomes a vicious cycle you can't break."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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