Drew Barrymore spent her 46th birthday Monday talking about shocking details of her 18-month stay in a psychiatric ward at the age of 13. (Watch the video below.)
“You couldn’t mess around there,” said the actor Howard Stern on his radio show. “If you did, you would be thrown into the padded room or strapped into stretchers and tied up.”
Barrymore said she has sometimes channeled her “inner riot grrrl” to incite fellow patients to rebellion.
The “ET” and “50 First Dates” stars said she forgave her mother, Jaid Barrymore, for putting her there.
“I went to clubs and didn’t go to school and stole my mom’s car and, you know, I had no control,” she said, per People.
She created a monster and she didn’t know what to do with the monster, and this was her last gasp. And I was really out of control. And I forgive her for making this choice. She probably felt she had nowhere to go. “
Barrymore, who previously spoke of admission to an institution after drug addiction and attempted suicide, won legal emancipation from her mother at the age of 14. She told Stern that they are now in touch after a long estrangement.
“We texted this morning,” she said. “I’m really glad that healing is taking place there.”