“My advice to anyone who is struggling with substance abuse would be to be really careful because drugs can really take a hold of your life,” she reflected years later in Paper. “Everybody is different, obviously, but for me, the mixture of marijuana and whatever other drugs and sometimes drinking really messed up my brain. It really made me a completely different person.”
Her lowest point saw her placed on a 5150 hold in July 2013 after starting a fire in the driveway of a stranger’s California home and inadvertently dousing her Pomeranian in gasoline. By that fall, mom Lynn Bynes was brought in as conservators over the Thousand Oaks, Calif., native and her estimated $5 million estate.
Since then, the actress has settled two hit-and-run cases, struck a plea deal for her 2012 DUI arrest, had her bong-tossing case dismissed, undergone various treatments and, in 2019, floated the idea that she might spend some time staying in a sober living community. There, the now-two-years-sober star “has a great support system with the other people there who are also in recovery,” a source told E! News. “They all support each other.”