As RuPaul approaches 25 years of sobriety, he is looking back on smoking marijuana as a “coping mechanism.”

The Drag Race star stopped by this morning’s episode of The View to promote his new memoir The House of Hidden Meanings. In it, he writes “a lot about drinking and drugs,” revealing that he spent every day “high” from the time he was 10 years old until he finally decided to get sober in 1999.

“I used for 30 years,” he told the panel. “In August, I will be sober for 25 years.”

He continued, “Listen, this is San Diego in the ‘70s. It was a different time. I smoked a lot of weed. Weed was sort of a social right of passage. It wasn’t like [a] dark, junky kind of thing. I used that as a coping mechanism.”

According to RuPaul, his “hillbilly parents” didn’t teach him how to “process feelings,” therefore, he turned to pot to help him instead.

“It was like a deferment plan, you know, when you can sweep things under the rug until you have the know-how to deal with them,” he explained.

The star said he finally decided to get sober when his partner got into “trouble,” though he didn’t elaborate further on what kind of trouble he had been in.

“It became very clear 30 years in that I needed to deal with this stuff because my partner had gotten into trouble and I had always felt my feelings through him,” he said. “So I realized, ‘Oh, my goodness. This is for me. I need to get myself together.'”

RuPaul agreed with co-host Joy Behar that he was “self-medicating,” noting, “we all do.”

“A lot of kids write to me and say they’re depressed, and I think if you are depressed in this world today, that is the exact right response,” he said. “But it is your job to find the joy.”

He added, “It’s not easy. I like to laugh, I like to dance, I like to create that joy … I like to have fun, fun, fun.”

The View airs on weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, call the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357.