Drew Barrymore Shares the Important Reason She Stopped Drinking Alcohol

In a new interview with People, The Drew Barrymore Show host said one of her biggest motivators was her desire to break the cycle of alcohol abuse in the Barrymore family.

"I think, for me, stopping drinking is one of the most honoring things I can do to the Barrymore name because we have all been such hedonists," the 49-year-old actress explained.

Her grandfather John Barrymore, a famous Shakespearean actor in the '20s and '30s, drank himself to death. Her Aunt Diana confessed to drug and alcohol use in her biography Too Much, Too Soon, and her father John Drew Barrymore had a history of alcoholism.

Barrymore herself began drinking at nine. She was also smoking marijuana and using cocaine by age 12 and was in rehabilitation by 13 before being granted legal emancipation from her parents at 14.

"Don't look to me as the pillar of health and wellness and having it all together," Barrymore cautioned. "It's just like, you know what? This didn't work for our family, and I'm going to stop it. I'm going to be the one to break the link in that chain and maybe my kids and their kids will be better off for it."

She added, "We have to fight genetic follies that our families bring to us."

Barrymore previously revealed that she had begun drinking more following her divorce from ex-husband, Will Kopelman, in 2016.

"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. It felt a lot more real because it wasn't just me. It was about these kids that I cared so much about," Barrymore told People in 2022.

"Then I probably cared so much that I was only giving to them and not taking care of myself," she continued. "It was a messy, painful, excruciating walk-through-the-fire-and-come-back-to-life kind of trajectory."

That traumatic experience in her life prompted her to quit drinking and spend time in therapy.

"It was my kids that made me feel like it's game time," she said.

While she's experienced her fair share of ups and downs since entering Hollywood as a kid, Barrymore said she never let it impact her work.

"No matter what I've gone through in my personal life, I have never brought it to work. I've never screwed a job over. I don't ever flake. I don't come unprepared. I give everything of myself to work," Barrymore maintained. "I'm a consummate professional with an infallible work ethic."

"And as much as I expect myself to be a better, stronger, wiser person, I also expect myself to show up for any professional endeavor, giving my all," she added. I don't phone anything in."