Drew Barrymore is opening up about her path to sobriety in an essay for her self-titled magazine. Barrymore, now 47, rose to popularity following her appearance as Gertie on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial when she was only six years old. At just seven years old, Barrymore made history by becoming the youngest person to host Saturday Night Live, and in 1984, she starred in Firestarter. Her struggles with alcohol and drugs started shortly after, as the actress has previously disclosed that she had her first drink at nine and began using cocaine at 12.
In her essay Take Care of Yourself, Barrymore reveals that she has been sober for three-and-a-half years. In 2021, the actress, who previously said she drank socially, revealed to CBS Mornings that she had become sober following her divorce from Will Kopelman. In Take Care of Yourself, she writes:
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Barrymore credits the “liberating” process of quitting drinking with allowing her to “finally become free of the torture of guilt and dysfunction.”
“One of the bravest things you can do is slay those dragons and finally change an awful cycle in which you’ve found yourself stuck. For me, it was to stop drinking.”
Barrymore was sent to rehabilitation centers and a mental institution before she turned 14. Upon her release from the mental institution (where she remained for 18 months), she filed for legal emancipation from her mother, and it was granted. At that time, Barrymore stepped back into Hollywood.
Drew Barrymore Has Something to Celebrate
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Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Barrymore appeared in many successful films, including Charlie’s Angels, Never Been Kissed, Mad Love, Batman Forever, Scream, Ever After, The Wedding Singer, and 50 First Dates. Barrymore earned a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Golden Globe Award for her role in Grey Gardens, a 2009 television film about Edith Bouvier Beale/and her mother, Edith Ewing Bouvier (Jessica Lange).
Most recently, Barrymore starred in Netflix’s Santa Clarita Diet. The series was canceled in 2019 after three seasons. The following year, Barrymore premiered her own talk show The Drew Barrymore Show. While Barrymore has taken a hiatus from acting, she is involved with other projects: she has her own podcast titled Drew’s News and her self-titled quarterly magazine. She is the mother of two young girls and is also the founder of Flower Films, a production company whose credits include Donnie Darko, How to Be Single and Barrymore’s directorial debut Whip It!
Barrymore, who has certainly come out on the other side following rough patches, shared a message of encouragement with her readers:
“Take a moment, take a breath, and give yourself a squeeze. We’re all just doing our best out here. And that in and of itself is something to celebrate,” she wrote.
