Opening a new window into his already much-scrutinized personal life, Governor Paterson said last night that he had used both cocaine and marijuana as a young man.

The disclosure came in an interview with anchor Dominic Carter on NY1. After Mr. Paterson told the interviewer that he had used drugs in the past, Mr. Carter asked him to specify which drugs.

“Marijuana?” Mr. Carter asked.

“Yes,” the governor responded.

“Cocaine?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Paterson continued: “I’d say I was about 22 or 23. I tried it a couple of times.”

The governor said he had tried marijuana when he was about 20 years old. “I don’t think I touched marijuana since the late ’70s,” he added.

Asked whether he had ever used taxpayer money to pay for his admitted extramarital affairs, Mr. Paterson said he had not.

“There isn’t even an allegation that I spent any taxpayer money on these affairs, and I did not. No. I didn’t,” he said.

Mr. Paterson also addressed his recent decision to reimburse his campaign committee for two nights he had spent in a hotel that he had used to carry on an affair. News reports had raised questions about the expenses. “I didn’t even spend campaign money on these affairs. I refunded my campaign for what were some expenses that we couldn’t find the documentation, and we did it in a short period of time,” Mr. Paterson said yesterday.

He declined to answer a question on how many extramarital affairs he had conducted in the past. “I don’t want to get into the feeding frenzy,” he said.