Actor Keach Tells How Drug Took Over Life

Stacy Keach, released from an English prison after serving six months for cocaine possession, told a House committee today how he started using the drug that eventually took over his life and landed him in jail.

“There is no greater imprisonment than that of being dependent on a chemical substance for one’s existence,” the actor said.

“Freedom from dependency on drugs is one of the most precious freedoms we have, and it must be a loving legacy for our children and their children as well,” Keach testified.

Keach, 44, was arrested in April, 1984, at London’s Heathrow Airport, where authorities discovered 1.3 ounces of cocaine in his luggage.

The star of the CBS-TV series “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer” told the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control that he first experimented with the drug on social occasions and believed that he would be immune to its seductiveness.

“I felt euphoric, self-confident, alert and even creative,” Keach said of his initial experience.

But within a few months, Keach said, cocaine had become an integral part of his life.

“And this is one of the hallmarks of cocaine’s destructive power,” he said. “It always deludes the user into feeling that he or she is in complete control until it is too late.”

Keach said it took an arrest to make him face up to the fact that he was dependent on cocaine. “I can only thank God that I now have an opportunity to speak out to others --in the hope that they will not have to travel down the same road as I did.”