Oliver Stone: Marijuana saved me from ‘becoming a beast’ in Vietnam

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Speaking to the hosts of CBS This Morning on Friday about the plot of his new drug war film “Savages,” filmmaker Oliver Stone took a moment to help his interviewers understand his affinity for marijuana, saying that it helped him and many others avoid “becoming a beast” during the Vietnam war.

“I went to Vietnam, and I was there for a long time,” he explained. “[Using marijuana] made the difference between saying human or, as Michael Douglas said, becoming a beast. I’m telling you, it’s rough and a lot of people in that platoon used it, not on the front line but in the back, to stay in touch with themselves. So, I look at that time in my life as really much of a life-saver.”

“I was a good soldier, by the way,” Stone added. “I got decorated. I was not a slouch by any means. A lot of guys were like that. We walked out of there relatively whole. A lot of guys were drinking and doing a lot of the killing that I thought was unnecessary — the raping and all that stuff, burning down villages. Guys who did the dope were much more conscious of the value of life.”

“Savages” opens in theaters nationwide on July 6. A trailer follows, below.

This video is from CBS This Morning, broadcast Friday, June 29, 2012.

This trailer for “Savages” was published to YouTube on April 5, 2012.

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Photo: Screenshot via CBS.com.