Despite being far removed from her storied past, Drew Barrymore admits she cannot escape one lingering thought from her youth.
"I will always have the ‘They’re coming, they’re coming’ mentality," Barrymore revealed, reflecting on her time in rehab.
"It’s the one thing that, unfortunately, I can’t shake. I’m pretty sure that this will all go away at any moment, I will get locked up again, and I will lose my job," she detailed to the Los Angeles Times.
When she was only 13 years old, Barrymore was sent to rehab, exiting the facility two months later against medical advice. Once she was out, the actress stole her mother's credit card and went on a cocaine binge before private agents hired by her mother handcuffed Barrymore and returned her to the facility.
Unfortunately, Barrymore's struggles with substance abuse did not end there, and she confessed it was her talk show and her kids that ultimately led her to the decision to stop drinking.
Barrymore's wildly popular show, "The Drew Barrymore Show," now in its third season.
"I think the opportunity at a show like this really hit me," she said. "I was like, ‘I can’t handle this unless I’m in a really clear place,'" she explained.
Over the years, Barrymore has been open about how her sobriety has evolved.
After her divorce from Will Kopelman in 2016, she turned to drinking to cope and admitted the situation became so bad that her therapist made the decision to quit working with her.
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"He just said, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’" Barrymore revealed. "It was really about my drinking. I said, ‘I get it. I’ve never respected you more. You see I’m not getting better. And I hope, one day, that I can earn your trust back.’"
After two years of working on herself, Barrymore and her therapist reunited. Now, the actress says she can admit, "I don’t stay stuck."
At the time, she was failing in her friendships too. Nancy Juvonen, her Flower Films co-founder and wife to Jimmy Fallon, gave the actress an allotted "grace period" before gathering Barrymore's friends to re-align her.
"We were like, ‘You’ve gotta snap out of it,’" said Chris Miller, who worked at Barrymore's company for 24 years. He is now showrunner on "The Tonight Show."
"‘We fully understand that this is a total f--- for you. But you’ve got two healthy kids, a fantastic career and incredible friends.’ And sometimes you have to be reminded of that," Miller explained to the Los Angeles Times.
Cameron Diaz, a longtime-friend to Barrymore, also admitted seeing her friend in this situation was "difficult to watch."
"But I knew that if we all stuck with her and gave her the support she needed, she would find her way," Diaz told the outlet. "I have absolute faith in her. You can’t even comprehend how hard it was to be her as a child, and then she shot out the other end with the ability to save herself."
