“I smoked a lot of that shit — regularly,” says the hip-hop mogul while promoting his new healthy living book.

Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons has been vocal supporter of veganism, meditation, yoga and a drug-free lifestyle for years, but he wasn’t always. In an interview with VladTV, he speaks candidly about his earlier years marked by regularly smoking PCP and heroin.

“I smoked a lot of water, angel dust, PCP. I used to smoke heroin … so I did a lot of stuff that wasn’t healthy, that I’m not proud of, but I look back and think ‘Wow, I survived that’,” he said, adding that he’s thankful he was too old for crystal meth.

Simmons says now he likes early morning meditation more than late-night drinking.

“I got high from 15 to 30 and I just stopped at 30 — except for holidays. But I’ve stopped everything, I’m like a monk, I don’t smoke, drink, I don’t eat animals, I do yoga every day, I meditate twice a day,” said Simmons, now 58.

Simmons recently released a new book, The Happy Vegan, and is developing a hip-hop musical for Broadway. Watch the interview below.