For a while there, Amanda Bynes was on her way down the worst of the child-star-turned-celeb paths. Drug abuse, DUI arrests, hospitalizations, all the stuff of tabloid nightmares. Now, however, she is four years sober and looking and sounding like a healthy 32-year-old on the cover of Paper magazine's Break the Internet issue. In the interview, Bynes explains how she got hooked. Though she began smoking pot at 16 and dabbled with harder drugs including MDMA and cocaine, it was Adderall that did her in. While on the set for the 2007 movie Hairspray, she read a magazine article that labeled Adderall "'the new skinny pill' and they were talking about how women were taking it to stay thin. I was like, 'Well, I have to get my hands on that,'" per the Hollywood Reporter.
Bynes says she went to a psychiatrist and got a prescription after faking the symptoms of ADD, then went to town. "I definitely abused Adderall." It's why she left the 2010 film Hall Pass. "I remember chewing on a bunch of them and literally being scatterbrained and not being able to focus on my lines or memorize them for that matter." Bynes quit acting altogether as her drug use spiraled. Today, years removed from the dark tabloid headlines, Bynes is attending the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising and considering a return to acting. “I have no fear of the future,” she said. “I’ve been through the worst and came out the other end and survived it so I just feel like it’s only up from here.” Her words of warning on drug experimentation: “Be really, really careful because you could lose it all and ruin your entire life like I did,” she said. (Read it in full here.)
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