Ben Affleck recalls having a dissociative panic attack after smoking marijuana in teens
The "Batman" star revealed his "Dazed and Confused" co-stars smoked marijuana while working on the set.
Ben Affleck recounts having a panic attack after smoking marijuana while he was still a teenager.
In the recently released book "Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused," written by Melissa Maerz, Affleck spoke about his experiences with marijuana while filming Dazed and Confused in 1993. The actor, who was only 20 when he played a supporting character in the movie, said he had to "fake it" around his castmates when they smoked marijuana as he had a bad experience with it at a younger age.
"I had a bad experience with marijuana at 15 — I had a dissociative panic attack," he said in the book, as per Vanity Fair.
"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," the 48-year-old added. The actor here is referring to the former United States president Bill Clinton, who in an interview had said, "I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale it, and never tried it again."
The "Batman" star went on to admit that his "Dazed and Confused" co-stars were also regularly getting drunk while working on the set, which made him a "little nervous" at the time. Affleck recalled: "I wasn't a very heavy drinker then. I became an alcoholic much, much later and I'm in recovery now, so that was a whole different time."
The Richard Linklater-directorial also starred Milla Jovovich, Anthony Rapp, Parker Posey, Matthew McConaughey, and Jason London, but Affleck hasn't revealed the name of his co-stars who smoked marijuana. He said about the time: "I was a little nervous, like, 'Should we be drinking before we're working tomorrow?' Some people were actually drinking and stoned at work."
And when the cast and crew were not partying, they were visiting the gun ranges, as Affleck reveals in the book. "Texas had extremely lax gun laws and most of us came from states where it was next to impossible to buy guns," he said
However, Affleck noted that while visiting gun ranges felt like freedom at that time, it has now become an "uncomfortable" memory for him.
"Part of the newfound freedom being down there was a bunch of us bought guns and went shooting at ranges on weekends, which seemed fun and innocent at the time, but given the subsequent tragedies with young people and guns, it makes me uncomfortable to remember," he explained.
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