The official toxicity limit for humans is between one and one and half grams of cocaine depending on body weight. I was averaging five grams a day, maybe more. I snorted ten grams in ten minutes once. I guess I had a high tolerance.

I was snorting a lot of cocaine and I had lost myself to a great degree. A lot of people, everybody was starting to realize what the coke was all about and they were all starting to get lost.

Strange thing, when they arrested me for the pot, the federal agents, they said, "We're sorry, we really don't want to bust pot people but this is tied into a heroin operation and we have to arrest you."

That's a terrible price to pay because you loved life so much, with the intensity of a thousand suns, and the women and all of it - and then it's all taken away from you. You end up walking the hallways of always to a place called tedium and apathy, day after day after day. Years go by.

I suddenly began to realize that to become an entrepreneur in the marijuana business would make me fairly well off. And I also liked the lifestyle, my own working hours.

In fact, I was welcomed. There were movie stars and rock stars. I became a pot star. I glorified in that. And of course as time wore on the business began to expand and grow. It went from more or less a college fun thing to a serious business. As the money grew, the power grew.

I thought cocaine was a fantastic drug. A wonder drug, like everybody else. It gave you [an] energy burst. You could stay awake for days on end, and it was just marvelous and I didn't think it was evil at all. I put it almost in the same category as marijuana, only hell of a lot better. It was a tremendous energy boost. It gave the feeling, a high, but nobody knew, well maybe a small percentage of people knew. But eventually everybody knew how evil it really was.