Hollywood star Drew Barrymore said she went through “excruciating” pain following her divorce from art advisor Will Kopelman and credits her kids with helping her find sobriety.
In a wide-ranging interview, the 47-year-old actress spoke to People magazine about fighting for her family after her split from Kopelman in 2016, calling the year that followed “cripplingly difficult” and more. At the time of her divorce, their kids were 2 and 3 years old.
“It just took me down,” Barrymore shared. “There are times where you can look at someone you think is a strong person and see them so broken and go, ‘How the f*** did they get there?’ And I was that person. I broke.”
“It was just trying to numb the pain and feel good — and alcohol totally did that for me,” she added. “The drinking thing for me was a constant, like, ‘You cannot change. You are weak and incapable of doing what’s best for you. You keep thinking you will master this thing, and it’s getting the better of you.'”
Drew Barrymore Opens Up About a 'Cripplingly Difficult' Year and How She Triumphed: 'I've Slayed More Dragons' https://t.co/xwp7j6StdM pic.twitter.com/m4FPyR9db1
— People (@people) December 27, 2022
Barrymore, who battled addiction as a child, said she decided to go into therapy, quit drinking, and explained, “It was my kids that made me feel like it’s game time.”
“After the life I planned for my kids didn’t work out — I almost think that was harder than the stuff [I went through] as a kid,” the “Charlie’s Angels” star shared. “It felt a lot more real because it wasn’t just me. It was about these kids that I cared so much about. And then I probably cared so much that I was only giving to them and not taking care of myself. It was a messy, painful, excruciating walk through the fire and come back to life kind of trajectory.”
In December 2021, the actress shared that she had not had a drink for two and a half years.
The host of “The Drew Barrymore Show” also talked about her divorce, explaining that there had been no singular event that led to it — which in some ways had made the situation even more difficult.
“There was no scandal. Nothing went wrong, which is cleaner, but makes it harder and more confusing because there isn’t The Thing to point to. We tried so hard to make it work,” she added. “[A friend] said to me, ‘Divorce is the death of a dream.’ That’s exactly what it feels like, something so final you can’t get it back.”
Related: Drew Barrymore Refuses To Buy Her Girls Christmas Presents. Here’s Why.