I was totally devastated for four years in the mid ’60s when l tried to buck the tide.

It was the worst period of my life. I had all this gigantic acceptance as a kid, and all of a sudden there was this monumental rejection.

Yes, there was nothing else to do to get you high. I mean, there was, but white kids didn’t hear about it.

Acid wasn’t getting a whole lot of bad press at the time, and as I saw the whole bad-press thing happen, I became aware that the government had done a whole lie on all the other benign drugs as well. It became clear to me that the government wanted no real drug education.

So, in the last year, the whole cast sued for release from our contracts.

My mom was a Democrat and I was scared to death that she was gonna blow it. First I was going to hell with Monroe, and now to Republican hell with Nixon.

I wanted to go to regular high school – it looked like a lot of fun.

There’s a big difference between somebody who does acid on weekends and somebody who takes downers every day.

I wanted to have a normal childhood. Normal relationships.

I was totally devastated for four years in the mid ’60s when l tried to buck the tide.

Well, I went to school with Jan and Dean, Ryan O’Neal, some of the Beach Boys we all use to party together.

Once in a while there was some TV offer and I’d take it.

Marijuana. Boy, I thought that was just terrible. How could this great man do this to his life?

Yeah, dog was this man’s best friend, for sure.

Then l learned to play guitar and l started writing songs and my mother formed for me a publishing business, so we started publishing and managing artists.

I had always turned it down-to me, smoking pot was absolutely the worst thing in the world. I thought of it as an addiction, and all my friends who smoked it, I felt they really needed help.

The kids put you on a pedestal. I didn’t like it.

A lot of my friends were fooling around with drugs then.

I was still thought of as a kid actor even though I was in my mid twenties.