Quaid`s addiction cost him everything in life

Quaid felt overwhelmed by the pressure to keep up with life in the fast lane.

Los Angeles: Actor Dennis Quaid has revealed that his addiction to drugs almost cost him everything in life.

"My greatest mistake was being addicted to cocaine. I started after I left college and came to Los Angeles in 1974. It was very casual at first. That`s what people were doing when they were at parties," Quaid wrote in a newspaper. As he came from small-town, the ‘Soul Surfer’ felt overwhelmed by the pressure to keep up with life in the fast lane. "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," he said. The actor said that his occasional party habit converted into a severe drug dependency when he began filming "The Big Easy" in the late 80s. "I was getting an hour of sleep a night. 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. The lack of sleep made it. So my focus wasn`t really there, which affected my acting," he wrote. Quaid said his addiction has taught him humility, reports a website. "That time in my life -- those years in the `90s recovering -- actually chiseled me into a person. It gave me the resolve and a resilience to persevere in life. If I hadn`t gone through that period, I don`t know if I`d still be acting. In the end, it taught me humility. I really learned to appreciate what I have in this life," he said. IANS