Amanda Bynes Admits Adderall Addiction Drove Her To Quit Acting

BYKarlton Jahmal6.9K Views
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: Actress Amanda Bynes arrives at the 2011 MTV Movie Awards at Universal Studios' Gibson Amphitheatre on June 5, 2011 in Universal City, California.

Bynes is on a clear path now.

Amanda Bynes was one of the last stars people thought would run her career off the rails when she was playing Ashley on All That. Bynes did exactly that though, creating an almost stereotypical "child star gone bad" narrative around her entire life about a decade ago. After years of drug addiction which fueled feelings of intense insecurity, Bynes has stepped onto a clearer path now. She covered Paper magazine this month, and Bynes goes into detail about the period in her life that pushed her to tweet at Drake, asking him to "murder my vagina."

"I started smoking marijuana when I was 16," admitted Bynes. "Even though everyone thought I was the 'good girl,' I did smoke marijuana from that point on." The actress was 16 around the same time she starred in Big Fat Lie with Frankie Muniz. "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," continued Bynes about her pot adventures. 

"Later on it progressed to doing molly and ecstasy," Bynes stated, giving an example of how she graduated to harder drugs. She says she never really liked cocaine, but fell in love with Adderall. "I definitely abused Adderall," she declared. After reading an article while she was filming Hairspray that enchanted her with a story of a magic pill that made women skinnier, Bynes faked the symptoms for ADD and got her a prescription for Adderall.

"When I was doing Hall Pass, I remember being in the trailer and I used to chew the Adderall tablets because I thought they made me [more] high [that way]," Bynes stated. "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." She then claims the urge to get skinny gave her a feeling of body dysmorphia. She "remembers seeing my image on the screen and literally tripping out and thinking my arm looked so fat because it was in the foreground or whatever and I remember rushing off set and thinking, Oh my god, I look so bad." She ended up quitting acting soon after walking off set in the middle of filming Hall Pass. 


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