ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard recalled how he’d spent his first major paycheck, totaling $72,000, on drugs.

He said he enjoyed the experience of indulging in LSD and heroin after reaching the big time in 1977, though he admitted it had taken a toll on his life and sent him to rehab in the early ‘80s.

“I spent it on drugs – every bit of it,” Beard said in the documentary ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band From Texas, which will be released on DVD on Feb. 28. “I never had enough money to be a proper addict until, you know, ’77, and then I accomplished that. The first time I ever did any drug at all was I injected LSD. And, boy, I liked it. It was looking for God and that whole thing, you know. I really became a seeker of truth and all of that."

He added that "the pills thing came about just from the workload. And the heroin thing came about because I just liked it. I mean, you ever done heroin? It’s great. It’s a fucking vacation for the mind, and I liked it. I liked it a lot.”

Referring to Eric Clapton’s notorious addiction issues of the early ‘70s, Beard noted that the guitarist "just snorted heroin, which is like so fucking not cost-efficient … like, you have to do five times as much to get the same buzz. But he was making more money.”

Beard said spending all that money was now “a regret�� and reflected that losses included his original drum kit, which he sold to buy drugs, and collapsed relationships.

“At the back of my mind I knew that I needed to kick heroin, I needed to stop doing cocaine,” he recalled. “I had done it all and I couldn’t go any further. So I told [band manager Bill] Ham, ‘I’m going into a 30-day program.’ And [he] said, ‘All right, take as long as you need.’ So I went to a 12-step program; I just wanted to get sober. I wanted to be like people I admired that could sit home and watch TV and go to bed, and that was okay [for them].”

“Frank goes all out on what he does and that includes the bad things," bandmate Dusty Hill added. "He was sick. If you’re a very good friend, you love a guy, you don’t want to see him die. You just want to see your brother get well.”