Cheech and Chong became the biggest selling comedy act in recording history by the end of the 1970s, but after 17 years together, the relationship went up in smoke when Cheech got tired of dealing with 'some f***ing Tommy s**t' from the 'world's humblest megalomaniac.'

In their live comedy act, the duo had a legendary chemistry and harmony 'that was established against our wills.' They became iconic together and made 'a s**t pot of money.'

They were in each other's company virtually 24/7 through club dates, records, concerts and movies that went by in a blur.

And though people assumed they had grown up together and were best friends because the comedic chemistry was seamless – it was always more of a love-hate relationship.

In his upcoming book, Cheech is Not My Real Name...but Don't Call Me Chong!, published by Grand Central, Richard 'Cheech' Marin himself describes his famous friendship with comedy partner Tommy Chong.

'We were never best friends. We were more like brothers,' Cheech writes.

Cheech and Chong became the biggest selling comedy act in recording history by the end of the 1970s, but after 17 years together, the relationship went up in smoke when Cheech got tired of dealing with 'some f***ing Tommy s**t' from the 'world's humblest megalomaniac'

In his upcoming book, Cheech is Not My Real Name...but Don't Call Me Chong , published by Grand Central, Richard 'Cheech' Marin himself describes his famous friendship with comedy partner Tommy Chong

After making the hit film Up in Smoke, their first feature-length film, in 1978, film-acting offers came in for Cheech (pictured in November, 2016 in New York City), but not for Tommy

Cheech (left, in 2016) turned them down because he had no interest in separating the act, but it still agitated Tommy (right, in May of 2016)

'As brothers, we could love and hate with equal intensity, but we always had each other's backs - because we were brothers.'

But then there was Tommy Chong's ever-expanding ego that was evolving into megalomania, and a negative dynamic surfaced in their relationship that wasn't going away.

'A real struggle set in between us,' Cheech said. Tommy wanted to be the boss and make all the decisions.

After making the hit film Up in Smoke, their first feature-length film, in 1978, film-acting offers came in for Cheech but not for Tommy. He turned them down because he had no interest in separating the act, but it still agitated Tommy.

A new contract for 'Cheech and Chong's Next Movie' designated Tommy as the director to assuage his ego.

At some point, Chong decided that he would be the star director and that everything was his idea. It got to the point where I had to tell him that something was his idea or it wouldn't get done.

Tommy threw him a party, bought him a director's chair, a megaphone and a jacket with leather elbow patches for a classic director's look, just to boost his sagging ego.

Cheech didn't care about titles. He just wanted to make a funny movie and he knew that they both wrote and directed the movies together.

'At some point, Chong decided that he would be the star director and that everything was his idea. It got to the point where I had to tell him that something was his idea or it wouldn't get done,' he wrote.

Chong wanted to be the boss and then decided he didn't want to write with Cheech anymore. He opted to write with his sister-in-law's stoner-artist boyfriend.

'What f***ing gall,' Cheech wrote.

The writing dynamic between the two had always centered around honesty when an idea wasn't great.

'Now Tommy didn't want me – or anyone else, for that matter to tell him he was full of s**t and increasingly...he was full of s**t,' Cheech wrote, adding that his friend was now preening to be the star performer.

Cheech was bored with the same old sex, drugs and rock and roll comedy bits but Chong still wanted to play the quintessential stoner.

'As brothers, we could love and hate with equal intensity, but we always had each other's backs - because we were brothers,' Cheech writes in his upcoming book. Here a scene from Up in Smoke

But then there was Tommy Chong's ever-expanding ego that was evolving into megalomania, and a negative dynamic surfaced in their relationship that wasn't going away

Their film use-by date arrived in 1985 and shrinking box office numbers revealed the audience had moved on. So Cheech bailed and lamented the end in his house on the beach in Malibu, 'trying to stay in a marijuana-induced fog as long as I could stand it.'

The comedy team ran out of juice, and his first marriage did as well.

'I wonder where my moon was during this period, astrologically speaking. Probably up Uranus,' Cheech wrote.

He didn't stay at home too long, however; he met another woman the next morning, Patti Heid, who became his second wife and mother of his next two children.

Now, Chong was the one to walk out the door when Cheech got a solo movie offer.

But the comedy team's great success all began years before, in mid-September 1968 when Chicano Richard Anthony 'Cheech' Marin, born in South Central Los Angeles and raised in the San Fernando Valley, crossed the border into Canada as a draft-dodger.

Attending San Fernando Valley State College (now called Cal State University, Northridge) with his mind set on becoming a lawyer and upholding the law and fighting for 'truth, justice and the American way,' he smoked a joint with his roommates, got 'high as a motherf***er' and suddenly realized 'what else have they been lying about?'

He had grown up following the rules, drinking his milk, eating his spinach, and dreaming the 'American wet dream.'

That being said, after the enlightening experience, he didn't wake up the next morning addicted to marijuana and craving heroin.

'It was definitely not the scary, horror-filled, haunted house that the establishment wanted you to believe it was,' he wrote.

He joined a fraternity with the best parties that attracted the hottest girls and was suddenly swept up in the anti-war movement after Bobby Kennedy's assassination at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles and the assassination of Martin Luther King two months earlier.

'Now Tommy didn't want me – or anyone else, for that matter to tell him he was full of s**t and increasingly...he was full of s**t,' Cheech wrote, adding that his friend was now preening to be the star performer

But the comedy team's great success all began years before, in mid-September 1968 when Chicano Richard Anthony 'Cheech' Marin, born in South Central Los Angeles and raised in the San Fernando Valley, crossed the border into Canada as a draft-dodger

The school had become a hot bed of radical student dissent, bringing in different speakers including Timothy Leary, with his LSD consciousness movement, and David Harris of the antiwar group the Resistance.

Both influenced Cheech and when the great heavyweight-boxing champion of the world, Muhammed Ali, came to the Century City Hotel in LA for an anti-war speech, Cheech was there.

Ali had just joined the Black Muslims and changed his name from Cassius Clay. He refused to be drafted on conscientious objector grounds stating, 'I ain't got no quarrel with the Vietcong. No Vietcong ever called me n*****.'

He was considered either the biggest villain or the biggest hero in the country. To Cheech, he was firmly in the hero category and 'the most physically impressive human being I had ever seen' and 'the prettiest champion that ever was,' as Ali himself often declared.

Cheech pushed his way to the front and handed the champ his draft card to sign, 'which he did with a clearly legible "M Ali."'

'It didn't matter that I had broken another federal law by defacing my draft card. I had Muhammad Ali's autograph on my draft card,' Cheech wrote.

After more anti-war demonstrations Cheech was completely on board with the movement. He handed in his draft card as a display of refusing to recognize the government's authority over him.

He wasn't going to Vietnam.

When Hershey issued sentences to the leaders of the peace movement – a chilling eight years at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas, he knew he had to head north and over the border.

With someone else's passport, he landed in Calgary and connected with a famous local potter to be his assistant and do the grunt work, while living off the land

He learned how to use a shotgun, hunt for moose and skin a bear, but when winter came and the studio was shut, he headed over to Banff where he worked as a grill cook and played a gig with a house band. Later, he would meet his comedy partner Chong in a topless bar

He got a new draft card that reclassified him as I-A, despite being entitled to a II-S, or a student deferment.

After saying goodbye to his mother, he bought a bus ticket for Calgary. 'I just knew that I was not participating in this war,' he said.

'I stuck out my thumb and hitchhiked to the bus station.

'I got on the Dog and took that bus out of my old life and into my new one.'

Before exiting college, Cheech had discovered a new passion - pottery - after following a pretty girl into a class.

In Canada, 'the land of the polite,' where 'everybody I saw looked happy,' he was intent on pursuing this passion.

It was definitely not the scary, horror-filled, haunted house that the establishment wanted you to believe it was.

With someone else's passport, he landed in Calgary and connected with a famous local potter to be his assistant and do the grunt work, while living off the land.

He learned how to use a shotgun, hunt for moose and skin a bear, but when winter came and the studio was shut, he headed over to Banff where he worked as a grill cook and played a gig with a house band.

Learning to ski, he broke one leg in half that pained him at the time but would be his lucky ace in the future.

Cheech then followed his roommate over to Vancouver when the ski season ended.

At the corner of Main and Pender, the most squalid intersection of Chinatown, Skid Row and Junkyville, he walked into a nightclub called the Shanghai Junk, Vancouver's first topless bar.

'What the f*** is this?' he said.

He explored the scene when he signed on to write for Poppin music magazine, which didn't pay anything but gave him free admission to any show in town. Little Richard was his first assignment.

In 2008, the pair got back together for a Live Nation tour of the U.S. and Canada. To this day, they still do occasional dates together

Chong is now married to Shelby Chong, and the two are pictured at Kari Feinstein's Pre-Oscar Style Lounge at the Andaz Hotel on February 23

Comedian Richard Pryor finally rolled into town and did an interview after getting annoyed by a heckler and ended up waving his genitalia in her face.

Before he left the bar that night, Cheech was told to go meet Tommy Chong, who was running an improvisational theatre company in that very topless bar he had passed the first day.

Tommy was well known in town for co-writing a song recorded by Diana Ross and the Supremes, called Does Your Mama Know about Me? So Cheech tripped out to the countryside to go to Tommy's house.

When Chong appeared from a back bedroom, he looked like a 'hippie-biker-Mongolian-weightlifter,' wearing gold-framed eyeglasses and had a big gap in his front tooth.

Cheech looked like a narc with a short haircut and no facial hair. Tommy ended up hiring Cheech as a writer for the group, paying 60 Canadian dollars a week.

Cheech's book detailing his life and comedy partnership with Chong is out on March 14

It was a bizarre show, sometimes with a mime in white face and a beret, held in a strip bar. Sometimes it was lowbrow hippie burlesque, but the crowd could get hostile and drunk and attempt to climb up on stage and beat up the performers.

When the mime didn't show up one night, Cheech went up on stage and did a routine that became a bit for the future successful comedy team of Cheech and Chung.

'The Beatles had Hamburg. We had Vancouver,' he reminisced.

In the environment of pot and psychedelics all around, they effectively tapped into the stoner culture.

'We weren't alone. We were just the first act to reflect it so openly. We didn't become hippies. We were hippies,' he said.

An ad in the local paper brought in the educated, college crowd, while pushing back the bikers, loggers, pimps and hookers to the back tables in the bar.

'For Tommy and me, this was the incubation period for what would become Cheech and Chong. We learned how to work together, what made each other tick.'

Later, during their breakup, Tommy got busted for selling bongs online through a company started by his wife and son. One was carried over a state line and the company, Chong Glass, was busted.

Tommy took the charge for his wife and son and was sentenced to nine months at the Taft Correctional Institute in Taft, California.

Cheech visited him once but Tommy requested he not come again because every time he came, prison officials had to do a body cavity search.

In 2008, the pair got back together for a Live Nation tour of the U.S. and Canada. To this day, they still do occasional dates together. Tommy was diagnosed with rectal cancer in 2015 and successfully went through chemo and radiation therapy.

Cheech is now on his third marriage and is 'ready for whatever comes next.'