Is Drew Barrymore sober? Cameron Diaz opens up on actress' 'difficult' struggle with alcohol addiction

Cameron Diaz recently said that Drew Barrymore’s struggle with alcohol addiction was “difficult to watch.”

The former recently spoke to the Los Angeles Times as part of Barrymore’s profile and shared that she gave her Charlie’s Angels co-star the “support she needed” during her struggle with addiction.

“I knew that if we all stuck with her and gave her the support she needed, she would find her way.”

Diaz also said that she has “absolute faith” in Barrymore’s recovery:

“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.”

Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz’s friendship began long before they were cast together for the 2000 classic film Charlie’s Angels. The two actresses reportedly became friends when Diaz visited a coffee shop where 14-year-old Barrymore worked.

The duo have continued to remain best friends over the years amid their respective rise to fame and individual lives.

Back in 2021, Barrymore revealed that she had been sober for two and a half years. However, the following year she told People she mostly relapsed to deal with the pain of her divorce from her third husband, Will Kopelman.

During her recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, the Scream star shared that while she has experimented with different levels of sobriety over the years, she cannot describe herself as completely sober at present.

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Drew Barrymore opens up about her struggle with alcohol addiction

Drew Barrymore opened up about her struggle with addiction in a new interview (Image via Getty Images)

Drew Barrymore opened up about her struggle with alcohol addiction in a recent profile published by the Los Angeles Times. She became addicted to drugs and alcohol during her teenage years and visited rehab twice by the time she was 14.

As per a 2015 interview with The Guardian, Barrymore’s mother emancipated and institutionalized her for her addiction. In 2021, the actress told Machine Gun Kelly on her own talk show that she was sober for over two years.

However, she said that drinking had remained “a constant” for her during a December 2022 interview with People. Barrymore revealed that she successfully battled drug addiction at a young age but relapsed on alcohol after her 2016 divorce from Will Kopelman.

Although the divorce was cordial, Barrymore said the situation was “cripplingly difficult” for her to handle. She shared that she drank to cope with her new reality:

“It was just trying to numb the pain and feel good—and alcohol totally did that for me.”

The Never Been Kissed actress told The Los Angeles Times that her situation spiraled badly enough for her therapist and celebrity psychoanalyst Barry Michels to quit her treatment despite working for nearly a decade.

“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.’”

Barrymore said she faced a turning point in her life after she received an offer for The Drew Barrymore Show in 2019 and even managed to stay sober for a while after filming the pilot:

“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.’”

The actress even reached out to her therapist two years after he quit and the latter agreed to work with Barrymore again. The E.T. star told the publication that she was finally capable of changing and realized that she needed to work for herself the same way she did for everyone else.

“You seem to be so inspired by everybody else, but you treat yourself like sh*t. When are you going to be enough for yourself?”

However, the road to complete sobriety is not easy and Drew Barrymore is yet to make a complete recovery:

“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.’”

Despite the struggle, the actress said she is still hopeful and doing better, especially being a mother to her two daughters Olive (10) and Frankie (8):

“I realized that just with me and my girls, I am truly happy. I'd always thought I'd be on this hamster wheel for this whole life. But maybe there will be something different before the lights go out.”

Drew Barrymore also reflected on the “dark place” she had been in the past and said that she is now focused on being a mother, which she dubbed as “the role of my life.”