Amanda Bynes’ cautionary tale

Former child star Amanda Bynes recently opened up about her drug abuse, which led to a series of erratic behavior and a stalled acting career.

The now-recovered Bynes, who has been a student at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles since 2014, revealed that she’s been sober for almost four years.

“I started smoking marijuana when I was 16,” the actress, now 32, told Paper magazine. “I didn’t get addicted [then] and I wasn’t abusing it. And I wasn’t partying or making a fool of myself… yet.”

But, she started experimenting with other drugs, eventually. “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.”

She retired from acting, after posting bizarre rants on Twitter and various incidents of inexplicable behavior. Bynes soon felt that she “had no purpose in life.”

“I’d been working my whole life and [now] I was doing nothing,” said the “She’s the Man” actress.
“I had a lot of time and I would ‘wake and bake’ and be stoned all day long,” she revealed, adding that she “was just stuck at home, getting high, watching TV and tweeting.”

Crediting her parents for surviving substance abuse, Bynes warns those who are experimenting, “Be careful, because you could lose it all and ruin your entire life like I did.”

On her chaotic behavior
online, she declared, “I’m ashamed and embarrassed with the things I said. I can’t turn back time, but if I could, I would. It makes me feel so horrible and sick to my stomach and sad.”—OLIVER PULUMBARIT