Dennis Quaid reveals faith saved him from a life of addiction: ‘I’m grateful to be alive really every day’

When life throws challenges at us many rely on faith to guide us, and Dennis Quaid is no different.

“I’m grateful to still be here, I’m grateful to be alive really every day,” Quaid told People. “It’s important to really enjoy your ride in life as much as you can, because there’s a lot of challenges and stuff to knock it down.”

Quaid’s challenges are not unique.

His struggles with addiction after a successful start to his career eventually led him to check himself into rehab or as he called it, “cocaine school.”

“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 69-year-old actor and musician explained how people who suffer with addiction are looking “to fill a hole inside us,” but once they break the cycle something needs to fill that hole, and it needs to be just as satisfying.

For Quaid, it was his faith.

He wrote a song for his mother “to let her know I was okay, because I wasn’t okay before then,” and he began reading various religious texts including the Bible and Quran.

“That’s when I started developing a personal relationship,” he recalled. “Before that, I didn’t have one, even though I grew up as a Christian.”