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Culture > Entertainment

Amanda Bynes Opens Up About Drug Abuse & The Road To Recovery For The First Time

Carissa Dunlap

Amanda Bynes was a household name in the 90s and early 2000s. She was known for her iconic roles on All That, The Amanda Show, What a Girl Wants, and She’s the Man. But for the longest time, she was among a group of female celebrities who were scrutinized by the tabloids. Things started to spiral for Bynes in 2010, where her strange Twitter rants and multiple car accidents became largely publicized on entertainment blogs. For the last couple of years, Bynes has disappeared from the public eye and remained silent on her troubled past. But in a new interview from Paper Magazine’s “Break the Internet” issue, the actress opens up about her “dark, sad world” and her issues with substance abuse.

In the interview, the actress recalled the first time she smoked marijuana at 16 years old. “Even though everyone thought I was the ‘good girl,’ I did smoke marijuana from that point on,” she explained. “I didn’t get addicted [then] and I wasn’t abusing it. And I wasn’t going out and partying or making a fool of myself…yet.”

It wasn’t until later that she tried harder drugs such as MDMA, cocaine, and ecstasy. “[I tried] cocaine three times but I never got high from cocaine. I never liked it. It was never my drug of choice.” When the actress tried Adderall, she said it became a frequent use. She recalled how “the mixture of being so high that I couldn’t remember my lines and not liking my appearance” drove her to drop out of the movie Hall Pass, which she now sees as “completely unprofessional.” 

And it wasn’t until Bynes saw herself in the 2010 movie Easy A that she decided to quit acting.

“I literally couldn’t stand my appearance in that movie and I didn’t like my performance. I was absolutely convinced I needed to stop acting after seeing it,” Bynes told Paper Magazine, recalling how the drugs affected her body image. “I was high on marijuana when I saw that but for some reason it really started to affect me. I don’t know if it was a drug-induced psychosis or what, but it affected my brain in a different way than it affects other people. It absolutely change my perception of things.”

It was then she became infamous for her Twitter rants to celebrities like Drake, which she now is “ashamed and embarrassed” of ever happening. “I can’t turn back time but if I could, I would. And I’m so sorry to whoever I hurt and whoever I lied about because it truly eats away at me,” she said. “It makes me feel so horrible and sick to my stomach and sad. Everything I worked my whole life to achieve, I kind of ruined it all through Twitter.” 

Bynes is currently four years sober and plans to finish her Associate’s degree at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. She then plans to continue with her Bachelor’s degree next year, according to Paper Magazine. The actress even said that she was excited to potentially return to acting in the future, saying that she has “no fear” of it. 

“My advice to anyone who is struggling with substance abuse would be to be really careful because drugs can really take hold of your life,” she told Paper. “There are gateway drugs and thankfully I never did heroin or meth or anything like that but certain things that you think are harmless, they may actually affect you in a more harmful way. Be really, really careful because you could lose it all and ruin your entire life like I did.” 

We cannot wait for more Amanda…please. 

Carissa Dunlap is a Her Campus News X Social Intern for Summer 2018. She is a current Publishing major and Journalism minor at Emerson College (Class of 2020). When she isn't perusing the YA bookshelf at the bookstore, she can be found watching dog videos on Facebook, at her favorite coffee shops, or relaxing on the beach. Follow her on Instagram @dunlapcarissa or Twitter @Caridunlap.