Nick Nolte’s strange mug shot explained
Shocking image captures drug-addled moment in actor’s ‘addictive cycle’
Nick Nolte blames his “asylum inmate” look in his infamous 2002 mug shot on psychoactive drug GHB.
The photo, which features the actor looking dishevelled and wearing a Hawaiian shirt, went viral after his 2002 arrest for driving under the influence. And now Nolte explains he took GHB, which was made illegal in 2000, before hitting the gym hours before his arrest.
“GHB was one substance I ran into that I shouldn’t have messed with,” he tells People magazine.
“A strong dose made me feel great, yet I knew I was repeating with GHB, the addictive cycle I’d been in before,” he says in his memoir Rebel: My Life Outside the Lines (William Morrow, 2018).
After finishing his workout, Nolte decided to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but changed his mind when he started to feel the effects of the drug. He was pulled over on his way home and taken to the hospital for a blood test.
“I was a mess and driving on the Pacific Coast Highway,” he writes in his memoir. “I’m told six drivers called 911 to report a big sedan weaving on the wrong side of the road.”
The picture was taken while the actor was at the hospital.
“It went viral — my hair wild, my expression unsettling, looking like an asylum inmate out for a lark,” he writes. “In 1992, People magazine had named me the Sexiest Man Alive, and now, 10 years later, I looked to all the world like a madman.”
Nolte subsequently checked himself into a “renowned psychiatric institution” and weaned himself off the drug in 30 days. He now considers himself a “renewed and fortunate man.”