Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/Shutterstock; Kathy Hutchins/Shutterstock
She gets by with a little help from her friends. Cameron Diaz opened up about Drew Barrymore’s struggles with substance abuse for a new profile about her longtime friend.
“[It was] difficult to watch,” Diaz, 50, told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month. “But I knew that if we all stuck with her and gave her the support she needed, she would find her way.”
The Something About Mary actress, who has known her Charlie’s Angels costar since she was 14, added: “I have absolute faith in her. You can’t even comprehend how hard it was to be her as a child, and then she shot out the other end with the ability to save herself.”
In the column, Barrymore recalled turning to alcohol amid her divorce from Will Kopelman. Things got so intense that she said therapist Barry Michels quit on her.
“He just said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ It was really about my drinking. I said, ‘I get it. I’ve never respected you more. You see I’m not getting better. And I hope, one day, that I can earn your trust back,’” the 50 First Dates star said.
Barrymore and Kopelman, who split in 2016 after four years of marriage, share two daughters: Olive, 10, and Frankie, 8. After a “grace period” following the breakup, Barrymore’s inner circle stepped in.
“We were like, ‘You’ve gotta snap out of it,’” Chris Miller, who worked with the actress for 24 years, told the newspaper. “‘We fully understand that this is a total f— for you. But you’ve got two healthy kids, a fantastic career and incredible friends.’ And sometimes you have to be reminded of that.”
Starting The Drew Barrymore Show in 2019 helped the host stop leaning on alcohol.
“I think the opportunity at a show like this really hit me. I was like, ‘I can’t handle this unless I’m in a really clear place,’” she explained, adding that she stopped drinking after shooting the pilot of the talk show.
Barrymore clarified that she’s not “some perfect Puritan,” and doesn’t go to Alcoholics Anonymous or work a traditional program.
“I kept thinking, ‘I’ll master this. I’ll figure it out.’ And finally, I just realized: ‘You’ve never mastered this, and you never will,’” she said.
Barrymore, who went to rehab as a teenager, opened up publicly about quitting alcohol for the first time in December 2021.
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“It was something I realized just did not serve me and my life,” she said on CBS This Morning, adding that she’s opted to be “very private” about a lot of her struggles. “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.”