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.”