Amanda Bynes opens up to Paper about drug use and possible return to acting

[TMC]

http://www.papermag.com/amanda-bynes...621549455.html

Amanda Bynes looks like her old self in a preppy plaid blazer and jeans on the cover of Paper magazine, as she opens up about her public breakdown after several years out of the spotlight.

The 32-year-old, who is nearly four years sober, is the star of the publication's third annual Break the Internet issue, in which she details how social media and her drug use led to her public downfall.

'Everything I worked my whole life to achieve, I kind of ruined it all through Twitter,' she admitted, adding: 'It’s definitely not Twitter’s fault — it’s my own fault.'

She insists her past behavior — including her wild tweets — were drug-induced.

'If you deny anything and tell them what it actually is, they don’t believe you,' she said. 'Truly, for me, [my behavior] was drug-induced, and whenever I got off of [drugs], I was always back to normal.'

'I can’t turn back time but if I could, I would,' she said. 'And I’m so sorry to whoever I hurt and whoever I lied about because it truly eats away at me. It makes me feel so horrible and sick to my stomach and sad.'

The child star said she didn't really like the taste of alcohol as a teenager, but she started smoking marijuana when she was 16. However, she added that she wasn't 'addicted' or 'abusing it' at that time.

The actress played a teenage girl who dressed in drag to pose as her brother, and she was unhappy to see herself with short hair and sideburns.

'I went into a deep depression for 4-6 months because I didn’t like how I looked when I was a boy,' she admitted, noting it was the first time she had ever told anyone that.

As she got older, her drug use progressed to molly and ecstasy. She also said she tried cocaine three times but 'never got high' from it.

'I definitely abused Adderall,' she said, recalling how she read a magazine article calling it 'the new skinny pill' around the time she starred in the 2007 film Hairspray.

Amanda said she was able to get a prescription after going 'to a psychiatrist and faking the symptoms of ADD.'

I don’t know if it was a drug-induced psychosis or what, but it affected my brain in a different way than it affects other people. It absolutely changed my perception of things.'

Amanda's story is a cautionary tale, and she warns about the dangers of gateway drugs because 'certain things that you think are harmless, they may actually affect you in a more harmful way.'

'Be really, really careful because you could lose it all and ruin your entire life like I did,' she said, noting that she is done experimenting with drugs and doesn't miss them at all.

'When I was off of them, I was completely back to normal and immediately realized what I had done — it was like an alien had literally invaded my body,' she said. 'That is such a strange feeling.'

Amanda Bynes opens up about her drug-induced breakdown in Paper | Daily Mail Online