Drew Barrymore has recently opened up about her ‘unorthodox’ upbringing while discussing a specific challenge she is now encountering as a parent.
Barrymore first entered the public eye at the tender age of seven when she starred in the 1982 blockbuster ET.
Subsequently, her mother exposed her to a world of partying, and she was introduced to drugs by the age of nine.
Now a mother herself, Barrymore has shared a ‘vulnerable’ post on social media reflecting on her childhood and the lessons she hopes to apply in her own parenting.
Barrymore posted on Instagram yesterday with the caption: “Phone Home.”
In the post, she described her efforts to candidly address some of the challenges she has been facing as a parent.
She wrote, “I wished many times when I was a kid that someone would tell me no. I wanted so badly to rebel all the time, and it was because I had no guardrails.”
“I had too much access and excess, and eventually, ‘no’ actually became a challenge. I would not accept it because I had so much autonomy at a young age that I simply couldn’t accept authority of any kind, and I ended up in an institution for two years.”
Barrymore has previously detailed her 18-month hospitalization at age 13 for alcohol and drug addiction.
In a conversation with The Guardian, she mentioned that her mother ‘locked [her] up in an institution.’
She further added, “Boo hoo! But it did give an amazing discipline. It was like serious recruitment training and boot camp, and it was horrible and dark and very long-lived, a year and a half, but I needed it. I needed that whole insane discipline.”
“My life was not normal. I was not a kid in school with normal circumstances. There was something very abnormal, and I needed some severe shift.”
In her Instagram post, Barrymore reiterated this idea, describing her institutionalization as ‘a blessing’ and ‘a hard-core style of a reset,’ which made her ‘appreciate everything.’
“And since there isn’t a time machine to go back and redo anything, I will keep loving my journey,” she added.
As a mother to two daughters aged 10 and 12, Barrymore’s unique upbringing prompts her to think more critically about her own parenting.
She ponders, “I wonder if my life’s experience was a butterfly net to capture the understanding of what young girls need. Is it my karma? I know now that I have never wanted to be more protective of kids in general.”
Reflecting on her decision to pursue ‘an artistic moment in Playboy in [her] early 20s’ and her failure to anticipate the permanence of such images on the internet, Barrymore advocates for protecting children from being ‘exposed’ to ‘too much, too soon’ and seeks stricter ‘guardrails against tech.’
She urges parents to collaborate with schools, psychologists, and tech companies to develop a phone that includes ‘many of the amazing aspects of artistic and inspiring innovations without the pitfalls of social media.’ Essentially, a device that allows you to ‘talk, text, track; music, maps, memories (photos)’ but little beyond that—similar to the new Barbie phone recently released by HMD.
Acknowledging that this suggestion may not be well-received by today’s youth, Barrymore concluded, “I am going to become the parent I needed. The adult I needed. And I want to have the voices in my head saying, ‘I’m trying… I’m trying.’ Because that’s all we can do.”
For confidential advice about drugs, you can contact the American Addiction Centers at (313) 209-9137, available 24/7, or reach out through their website.