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Amanda Bynes Sits Down For First Interview In Over A Year, Says Drugs And Alcohol ‘Really Messed Up My Brain’

By Kathryn Cook
Published on: 11:19 PST, Nov 26, 2018

After a trouble-filled past few years, actress Amanda Bynes is finally starting to feel like her old self again.

As fans of Bynes know, 2013 and 2014 were filled with lots of problems for the starlet including two DUI arrests and some very bizarre public behavior. Since then, Amanda has taken a step back out of the spotlight to get herself well again and she’s finally talking about what led to her downfall years ago in a candid interview with Paper Magazine.

“I started smoking marijuana when I was 16. Even though everyone thought I was the ‘good girl,’ I did smoke marijuana from that point on.” She said. “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.”

“Later on it progressed to doing molly 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. I definitely abused Adderall.”

The actress went on to explain that she would go to a psychiatrist and fake the symptoms of ADD so she was able to get her hands on a prescription for Aderall. That drug in particular played a big role in her being “scatterbrained and not being able to focus” when she was shooting the movie Hall Pass in 2010. Then, it was a mix of being so high and not liking the way that she looked on camera that led to a downward spiral.

Soon after, Bynes attended a screening of the hit film Easy A, which she starred alongside Emma Stone in. Bynes recalls having a different reaction to the film than everyone else did.

“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 recalls.

“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 changed my perception of things.”

Then, she infamously took to Twitter to tell her fans that she was “retiring” from acting which, looking back, she says was really foolish. After that, she says that she spent a ton of time getting stoned at home and sending out tweets that she is now really, really ashamed of. Bynes says that everything that she worked so hard for was ruined by her Twitter rampages and she deeply regrets it.

“And I’m so sorry to whoever I hurt and whoever I lied about because it truly eats away at me. It makes me feel so horrible and sick to my stomach and sad,” Bynes told the publication.

Now, Bynes is getting her life back on track. Not only has the actress been sober for the past four years, but Amanda told the publication that she’s currently enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, also known as FIDM, in downtown Los Angeles and has been taking classes there since 2014.

The 32-year-old says that she has hopes of designing her own clothing line at some point in the future, but right now, her focus is getting back into acting. Seems like she has a bright career in front of her.

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