Dennis Quaid Recalls Seeing 'White Light' During Addiction Battle
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Dennis Quaid is just "grateful to still be here."
In a candid new interview, the 69-year-old actor revisited his history of substance misuse, recalling that at one point he was certain he was going to end up "dead or in jail or losing everything I had."
"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," the actor told People.
"It’s a struggle," he continued. "We’re all looking for the joy of life, and drugs give that to you and alcohol ... really quick. Then they’re fun and then they’re fun with problems, and then they’re just problems after a while. That’s really what we’re looking for, the joy of life, which is our gift, actually, the relationship with God that we all have. It’s at the bottom of it, the joy of being alive."
Following his success in 1979’s Breaking Away, 1983’s The Right Stuff, and 1989’s Great Balls of Fire! and in the midst of his career, Quaid checked himself into rehab.
Shortly after, in 1991, he wed Meg Ryan and a year later, the couple welcomed their son, Jack Quaid. The two divorced in 2001 after about a decade of marriage.
When asked "what saved" the Texas native, he credited his "Christian roots."
"When you’re done with the addiction, you need something to fill that hole, something that really works, right?" he said, explaining that creating faith-based music became one of his outlets–as did baseball.
The father of three has been open about his battle with addiction for some time, previously telling Parade that his success felt foreign to him up until he "got off cocaine."
"I felt like I deserved it once I got off cocaine. That would be in my late 30s," he shared. "Cocaine makes you paranoid and lowers your self-esteem. We all did it back in the ’70s and ’80s. Had a great time, so they tell me. It was fun, then it was fun with problems, then it became just problems."
But now, Quaid told People, he's "grateful to be alive really every day" and is set to release a new album called Fallen: A Gospel Record For Sinners.
In addition to his 31-year-old son Jack, Quaid also shares 15-year-old twins Thomas and Zoe with ex Kimberly Buffington. In 2020, he married his current wife, Laura Savoie. "I'm the happiest I've ever been," he concluded.
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