Drew’s Demons : Daughter: ‘When you’re hiding your drug use, that can be disastrous.’

Drew Barrymore became a star at age 6 thanks to her role in “E.T.� Three years later she took her first drink. She smoked pot at 10, snorted cocaine at 12 and contemplated suicide at 14. The actress has battled drug dependencies for almost two years and now, at 15, believes she has kicked her habits. So does her mother, Jaid, a single parent who, along with Drew, has undergone intensive counseling. Mother and daughter talked with Times staff writer Michael Quintanilla about how their lives fell apart, how they have tried to correct their mistakes and how other families can help to prevent a similar tragedy.

Drew Barrymore has just come home from a private school in the San Fernando Valley, fast food in a bag and nothing to hide. Not her breath. Not her eyes. Not her friends.

“It’s totally OK to be a normie,� she says, using the drug-rehab lingo associated with being alcohol- and drug-free.

The actress says she has been sober--no alcohol, no marijuana, no cocaine, nothing stronger than Marlboros--for nine months. She volunteers that she has stepped into one nightclub and attended three, maybe four, parties during this time, but did not drink. Drugs, to her knowledge, were not present. And if they were, “I would have left,� she says.

“I don’t do that stuff anymore . . . I don’t go around it. Through sobriety I’ve found another life, a better life. But it hasn’t been easy.� And her battle to stay clean, she adds, “isn’t over.�

Dressed in a striped cotton sweater, blue sweats and combat-style boots, the actress is sitting on a living room sofa, a framed poster of Katharine Hepburn hanging above her head. The walls and table tops are covered with photographs of Drew.

She wraps her hand around a silver cross, a gift from her mother Jaid to mark the occasion of her return home in January. Drew had been gone for six months, living at a drug-rehabilitation center and then with a couple (musician and former drug abuser David Crosby and his wife Jan Dance) in a structured family environment--with rules to follow.

“I never take it off,� Drew says about the crucifix, “not even to shower.�

The Sherman Oaks 10th-grader says she starting drinking and taking drugs because of the two lives “I felt I was living,� one as an adorable child actress who was invited to night clubs and parties; the other as a child growing up in a family without a structure.

That dichotomy, she says, was difficult to handle, “especially for a 9-year-old.�

“Back then I always felt I was older than I was,� she says. Her friends and acquaintances were older, and it was through them that she had access to alcohol, marijuana and later, cocaine, at sleep-overs away from her mother. Drew says her mother never knew about her drug use during those years because “I was able to hide it from her. Addicts are the best manipulators� and she could talk her way out of not coming home for an entire weekend.

When she stayed out without permission, her mother would ground her for two weeks.

But “the punishing factor never works,� the actress says, “because kids just get a major resentment against their parents. They learn not to respect them and to rebel.�

She wanted to escape from problems that included “feelings of being unloved� by her parents who separated before she was born. Her parents are now divorced, and she says she hasn’t seen her father, John Drew Barrymore Jr., for years and doesn’t know where he lives.

After three stays at the ASAP Family Treatment Center in Van Nuys, the last of which ended in September of last year, she and her mother are starting over.

“The best thing for both of us was treatment,� Drew says, referring to her mother’s own therapy. “That’s why our relationship is working today. We’ve learned how to be kinder to each other and how not to push the wrong buttons.�

And how to follow a program that is designed to keep Drew off alcohol and drugs.

She attends weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meetings as well as weekly individual and family counseling sessions at ASAP. In addition, Jaid attends a weekly ASAP parent-group counseling session and receives individual counseling.

Drew says she’s also come to terms with school, which in years past she used to skip because she was sleeping off a drug high or drinking binge at a friend’s home.

“It’s hard because I was never really good in school. But I make the effort,� she says.

And she has a new routine. Jaid drives her to and from school and knows at all times where and with whom her daughter is spending time.

She says that now--after learning that alcoholism can be hereditary (several members of the famous acting dynasty, including her grandfather John Barrymore, were victims of alcoholism), after “being forced� by her mother to get professional help, after having a drug-use relapse that resulted in a suicide attempt--she realizes that she must care “for my sobriety as if it were a huge diamond.�

Drew also wants to help other teen-agers and parents through her book, “Little Girl Lost� (Pocket Books, $17.95), which was published last month.

“I wanted a happy ending,� she says about her book. “But I also had to be honest with myself� and that meant admitting that she will always be a recovering alcoholic-addict.

Thinking back on her ordeal and her continuing recovery, Drew says she hopes her book will benefit other families that might be blind to the easy availability of drugs and “manipulation that goes on with kids.� She says that manipulation involves hiding drinking and drug use from parents by disguising breath with mints, chewing gum and sprays, by soothing bloodshot eyes with eyedrops, and by staging emotional outbursts.

She says the best advice she can give teen-agers is “to find something besides drugs and drinking that makes you just as happy as feeling high. I love music. I’m a music fanatic--hip-hop and funky reggae are my favorites. That’s my high these days.�

And being around her “normie� friends who can have a party without liquor and marijuana.

The actress says it’s also important for parents to enforce a curfew, something she never had.

Sometimes, Drew says, she wouldn’t come home for four straight days. She’d never call and when she did, she would be belligerent to her mother.

“Now I have a curfew--10:30 p.m. during the week and 1 a.m. on weekends, which is really strict. It may not be for just an everyday teen-ager, but for me it’s real strict because I’ve never had that.�

She says “staying away from slippery places and slippery people�--nightclubs and parties known for having drugs and people who push them--is advice she would like to pass on to other teen-agers.

“You have to look at all the issues around you. If you’re hiding your drug use that can only be disastrous,� she says. “The more in your disease you get and the more in denial you are, the easier it is to pull off the lying and manipulation ‘cause you start to believe that you really are sober when you’re not. That’s when you know you are really sick.� She says through ongoing counseling she has learned “to love myself and other people unconditionally� and how to be a better daughter.

It’s all part of being a normie.

“I’m like every normal teen-ager. I get down on myself. I have periods of low self-esteem, and I get totally discouraged when things don’t go my way. But it’s not half as bad (as) when I used to turn to drugs to get over those feelings.�

Now she can think more clearly in working out her problems by making lists to help her, speaking with a close friend, following AA’s 12-step program or turning to her mother.

“She gives me more encouragement in one day than I’ll ever need for the rest of my life,� Drew says about her mother. “She’s always really there for me and yet she keeps me in line so I don’t even come close to stepping back. She’s always pushing me forward.

“I give my mom a kiss and a hug without hiding my breath, hiding my eyes, hiding the fact that I hadn’t taken a shower in four days, that I had been loaded for six days straight, all that stuff.�

Still, she says she has her days when temptation is hovering nearby.

“There are days when I sit in my room and go, ‘God, I want to go out to a big huge party with all my friends and stuff.’

“I’m still confronting those fears. I’m fearful of losing my friends, my family, fearful of going back to the way I was. I’m fearful of losing my sobriety.

“I feel like if a drug was passed right in front of my face I really honestly right now would never take it,� she adds. “But that doesn’t mean that I should be so careless.�