The trouble with coming late to politics, Arnold Schwarzenegger is learning, is that the impolitic follies of youth can come back to haunt you.

The Smoking Gun website has dug up an old and potentially embarrassing interview the California candidate gave to Oui, a racy, now-defunct adult magazine published by Playboy. In the 1977 Q&A, Schwarzenegger, now 56, talks candidly about sex and drug use, saying a few things his GOP backers would probably rather not hear.

In the interview, teased with the coverline, "Arnold Schwarzenegger on the Sex Secrets of Bodybuilders," the muscular then-29-year-old describes participating in an orgy with one woman and several other bodybuilders at a gym, and talks about the sexual antics backstage at the 1972 Mr. Olympia contest. "Having chicks around is the kind of thing that breaks up the intense training," Schwarzenegger said.

The "Terminator" star also shows a '70s attitude toward drug use, noting that he just consumed "grass and hash – no hard drugs. But the point is," he continued, "that I do what I feel like doing. I'm not on a health kick."

The story appeared during the release of "Pumping Iron," the 1977 bodybuilding circuit documentary that first brought him to nationwide prominence, the website notes.

Schwarzenegger, who is currently a leading candidate to replace Gov. Gray Davis in California's upcoming recall election, shrugs off the article. "I haven't lived my life to be a politician," he told a talk radio program Wednesday, notes Reuters.