Drew Barrymore Says She ‘Can’t Believe’ She’s ‘Alive’ After Her Wild Past in Candid New Comments

Drew Barrymore often uses her eponymous show to take a look back at various aspects of her life. But in a new interview, she recaleld some of the most difficult times in her troubled past, and admitted she couldn’t believe she’d survived. “I’ve had a ‘bad girl’ narrative on my back my whole life,” the Never Been Kissed star, 48, confessed to Us Weekly for an expansive interview published on February 7.  “I thought I deserved bad things. Now I’m raising two daughters. I can’t do that to myself anymore. Kind of like the drinking — I’m picking off things one at a time, going, ‘I can’t carry you anymore. You aren’t good for me.'”

Drew continued, emphasizing during the interview that her current life is filled with gratitude. “The personal part of me has been the ultimate work in progress,” she explained. “The professional in me feels really brave and never entitled. Always so privileged and grateful. I’ve lost everything. I’ve got it back. I’ve lost it again. Got it back. So I don’t assume anything stays. I know not to take anything for granted. Whatever difficult times I’ve gone through professionally, I believed I could rewrite things.”

And rewrite them she did, transcending her former difficulties to create an entirely new life. But while the mom of two has appeared confident and on the ball for years, she also admitted she’d struggled in her personal life. “Then in my personal life, I was a failure and a broken person,” she said. “I can’t f***ing believe I’m alive sometimes.” Drew also went on to say that time literally heals. “Time is the greatest asset we have — it allows things to get better, to shift, to have light come into a dark space,” she shared. “It has taken my whole life to get here, but I’m so happy to be out of the jail in my mind.” 

The Wedding Singer star famously battled addiction and mental health issues in her youth — but elsewhere in the interview, she said she’s kicked her alcohol habit for good. “I drank for, oh God, since I was nine,” she divulged. “And then one day, I just thought, ‘I’m never going to do this again.’ I don’t have cravings. I have alcohol all over my house. I serve people drinks. It’s a confident choice. But it took me 35 years to get there. So, once I got there, I was really done.”