Former Real Husband of Beverly Hills, Harry Hamlin, detailed a traumatic experience from his time in jail in the 1970s on his wife, Lisa Rinna’s Let’s Not Talk About the Husband podcast.
The LA Law star confessed that he was “forced” to take the hallucinogenic drug phencyclidine (PCP) while briefly in jail as a young man.
Harry Hamlin’s jail stint:
The Mad Men actor explained that he was jailed in 1970 after he was caught with 25 pills his fraternity brothers gave him. “I was at Berkeley. An upperclassman in the fraternity house came to me before I was going down to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving.”
He continued, “Take these pills down and give them to another house at USC, they need these for their exams.’ So I took them down, and they didn’t want the pills. So, I had to take them back.” Harry traveled back to school on the plane with the pills repacked in his “guitar case” when he was caught.
Harry Hamlin said he had a connection with the warden of the jail. His brother was “an actor in the acting school at Berkeley,” and a member of the drama department. “I sit down with the warden, my lawyer, and we all have a cheeseburger together. And the warden says, ‘Listen, when you get there, don’t worry about anything. I’ll make sure that you’re okay.’”
Enter the PCP …
The next day, Harry claimed he was offered a joint by an inmate, to which he refused multiple times. The actor maintained his persistence; however, he eventually caved in and tried it – not realizing what it was.
“In jail, I was forced to smoke PCP. I was so stoned because [an inmate] forced me to take three or four hits of it.” Harry noted, “I was completely messed up after I had that.”
“That’s how I was forced to have the PCP. Somebody had brought in a little sack of rolling tobacco that was soaked in PCP … so they were smoking it and there was no odor. But they were high as kites,” he recalled.
