Drew Barrymore and Machine Gun Kelly opened up about their previous mental health struggles on The Drew Barrymore Show.
Barrymore revealed that she has been sober for two and a half years. On Thursday, during a chat with CBS This Morning, the 46-year-old actress shared her “quiet, confident” journey to sobriety.
Talking about quitting alcohol, Barrymore said, “It was something I realized just did not serve me and my life.” She did not share more details about becoming sober, but she did admit that she has “been very private with a lot of my struggles.”
She said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a revolt against the perfection right now that we are all forced to see and feel through social media. We’re in an impasse and a crux of a moment where talking about how we figure ourselves out, how we fix ourselves takes a journey and solutions. Most people do it in private.”
Kelly also shared how he has become more emotionally honest and vulnerable outside of his music during the talk show.
He said, “I think I’m new to being vulnerable outside of songs. I see a lot of pictures of me and there’s like, smiles on them. It’s just weird though because I didn’t feel good at all that day and I kind of am sick of smiling on days when I don’t feel like smiling.”
“And I feel like this odd pressure because I don’t want my fans to think that I’m taking something for granted,” he added, “so if I accept an award and I’m super smiley, but behind the scenes, there was stuff going on…”
The 31-year-old rapper, who shared that he’d rather speak about “fun stuff” with Barrymore, said that “a lot of what I do is for other people, and I haven’t given myself the time to just accept that it’s OK to not be OK.”
Barrymore responded by saying she “likes him so much more” after opening up about his mental health issue. She even shared that needed mental health help after her 2016 divorce from Will Kopelman.
She said, “I wasn’t doing very well, and I just wanted to go talk to some people and how to pull myself out of a hole, and I had these two kids that I had to fight for and I needed help. I started reaching out to different people and eventually, I really made some big, sweeping changes in my life, and I got on a whole new track — not back on track, but a brand new one that I helped build.”
Earlier this year, Barrymore shared that at the age of 13, she spent 18 months in a psychiatric ward. And in September, she revisited the institution during an episode of her show.
She said it was “empowering” to revisit the institution after so long.
Barrymore said, “Life is so wonderful compared to what it was in this place. I can’t even believe I actually get to be where I am now because when I was here I didn’t see that, I thought I would be here forever.”
“I never thought I was going to make it to somewhere better and I am just so happy with my life and I don’t know if I would have the life I have if it wasn’t for a place like this,” she added. “So it was so important to come here today and just like honor this.”
