In 1990, Dennis Quaid felt rock bottom fast approaching.
"I remember going home and having kind of a white light experience that I saw myself either dead or in jail or losing everything I had, and I didn't want that," he told People magazine in a July 2023 cover story.
So, after making a name for himself with films like 1983's The Right Stuff and 1989's Great Balls of Fire!, Quaid checked himself into rehab - or 'cocaine school', as he called it.
When he got out, he turned to faith to "fill that hole" that he said is left when an addict is "done with addiction".
"We're all looking for the joy of life, and drugs give that to you and alcohol and whatever it is for anybody give that to you really quick. Then they're fun and then they're fun with problems, and then they're just problems after a while," he explained.
Sobriety helped him find "the joy of being alive" again.
"I'm grateful to still be here, I'm grateful to be alive really every day," Quaid said. "It's important to really enjoy your ride in life as much as you can, because there’s a lot of challenges and stuff to knock it down."
In 2018, Quaid told Today he was a daily cocaine user in the 1980s when his star was on the rise.
"I had spent many, many a night screaming at God to please take this away from me, 'I'll never do it again because I've only got an hour before I have to be at work.'"
Then, after making it through the workday, he would change his tune.
"Then about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I would go, 'That's not so bad,'" he recalled, and the cycle would repeat.