Dazed & Confused, Indeed! Ben Affleck Had A 'Panic Attack' At 15 After Smoking Weed
Sometimes we find out the hard way! Actor Ben Affleck revealed he had a “bad experience” with pot as a teenager during his time working on the hit film Dazed and Confused.
“I had a bad experience with marijuana at 15. I had a dissociative panic attack,” Affleck shared in the new book Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused. “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.”
Affleck played character Fred O’Bannion in the cult film when he was 19 years old.
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The Oscar winner revealed that he “wasn’t a very heavy drinker,” at the time. “I became an alcoholic much, much later, and I’m in recovery now, so that was a whole different time. I was a little nervous, like, ‘Should we be drinking before we’re working tomorrow?’
“Some people were actually drinking and getting stoned at work,” he confessed.
The Gone Girl star also shared that he adopted a Siberian Husky while filming the movie and that the cast would hit up the local shooting range when not on set.
“Texas had extremely lax gun laws and most of us came from states where it was next to impossible to buy guns,” he explained. “So, part of the newfound freedom of being down there was a bunch of us bought guns and went shooting at ranges on the weekends, which seemed fun and innocent at the time, but given the subsequent tragedies with young people and guns, it now makes me uncomfortable to remember.”
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Dazed and Confused was released in 1993. The film was a coming-of-age tale about a group of rowdy teenagers in Austin, Texas, celebrating their last day of high school in 1976.
The film starred Affleck, Milla Jovovich, Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey and Adam Goldberg.
OK! exclusively reported earlier this month that the 48-year-old actor is “desperate for a change” and ready to leave Hollywood behind. “He’d like to get back to nature, somewhere like rural Massachusetts or maybe Maine,” a source dished to OK!.
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The source added that Affleck hopes to convince his girlfriend, Ana de Armas, to move with him. “He thinks it will be better for their relationship if they get away from L.A.”
The actor plans to regularly fly back to see his kids — with ex Jennifer Garner — Violet, 14, Seraphina, 11 and Samuel, 8. Added the insider, “Mostly, he just wants a simpler life.”