For years, Drew Barrymore has come off as a woman of many talents and a dedicated mom who goes through life with a fun-loving attitude .
And for the most part, that fun and ebullient nature is at the core of The Drew Barrymore Show , which has recently begun its second season.
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However, this season’s premiere makes it very clear that her healthy approach to life was hard-won and comes after a turbulent childhood that strained her relationship with her mother and saw her sent to a psychiatric ward at 13.
But while she’s addressed this part of her life before, a recent clip from her show comes as a particularly powerful step in her journey to make peace with her past as it actually features her returning to her old facility.
As you’re about to see, it didn’t take long for this visit to have a clear emotional effect on her.
While sitting atop an old Ford Bronco, Barrymore reminisced on the events that led her to the Van Nuys Psychiatric facility in Los Angeles.
As she said in the full video, “I was a real wild child, and I just got so out of control that no one knew what to do with me.”
According to Insider , she had previously elaborated on this while speaking to Howard Stern and said she had spent a long period clubbing, ditching school and stealing her mother’s car.
So by the time she was 13, her mom and a friend arranged to send her to the facility in the middle of the night.
And once she stepped through its front doors, she wouldn’t be allowed to leave until a year and a half later.
In her words, “I hated it. I kicked, I screamed. One minute you’re at movie premieres and clubbing and the next minute you’re in a full-blown institution with barbed wire everywhere and you can’t get out.”
In the Stern interview, she also said that when patients acted out in there, it wasn’t uncommon for staff to throw them in padded rooms or tie them up with stretcher restraints.
But while she hated it there at the time and wouldn’t want to be admitted again, she thought it was important to revisit the place be cause doesn’t want to “lose sight” of that part of her journey.
As she put it, “I don’t know if I would have the life I have if it wasn’t for a place like this. So it was so important to come here today and just honor this.”
But while it’s easier for her to see that in hindsight, memories of how hopeless her situation felt at the time proved particularly emotional for her.
As she said, “I thought I would be here forever — I never thought I was going to make it to somewhere better.”
Her powerful visit to the facility comes about about 11:45 in the video and marks the final stop on a tour of the places that had a significant impact on her childhood.
h/t: Insider
