For a while, it seemed like Amanda Bynes was going down a self-destructive, Lindsay Lohan-esque path. For a time, Amanda was more like an oddity to cover, as she was doing a lot of stuff for attention, which she got. And then it just got sad, and no one really knew the specifics of what was going on with her. Eventually, Amanda’s parents brought her home to California, got her into some kind of drug treatment program, and she eventually enrolled into fashion school. She’s doing well right now – she’s been clean for years, she’s about to get an Associate’s of Art degree from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in LA, and she covers the latest “Break the Internet” issue of Paper Magazine. You can read the full piece here – unlike Lindsay Lohan’s many bullsh-t “comebacks,” Amanda seems clear-eyed, compassionate and truly sorry about everything that happened. Some highlights:
She was never a drinker: “I never really liked going out that much,” she says of her teenage years. “I [only] started going out around 25 years old.” She says she didn’t really drink much as a teenager and “never liked the taste of alcohol. I could not stomach it.” But, she says, “I started smoking marijuana when I was 16. Even though everyone thought I was the ‘good girl,’ I did smoke marijuana from that point on. I didn’t get addicted [then] and I wasn’t abusing it. And I wasn’t going out and partying or making a fool of myself… yet. Later on it progressed to doing molly and ecstasy. [I tried] cocaine three times but I never got high from cocaine. I never liked it. It was never my drug of choice.” One drug she admits she started taking on a regular basis, however, was Adderall. “I definitely abused Adderall,” she says.
On seeing ‘Easy A’: “I literally couldn’t stand my appearance in that movie and I didn’t like my performance. I was absolutely convinced I needed to stop acting after seeing it. I was high on marijuana when I saw that but for some reason it really started to affect me. I don’t know if it was a drug-induced psychosis or what, but it affected my brain in a different way than it affects other people. It absolutely changed my perception of things. I saw it and I was convinced that I should never be on camera again and I officially retired on Twitter, which was, you know, also stupid. If I was going to retire [the right way], I should’ve done it in a press statement — but I did it on Twitter. Real classy! But, you know, I was high and I was like, ‘You know what? I am so over this’ so I just did it. But it was really foolish and I see that now. I was young and stupid.”
She didn’t do much after she retired: “I just had no purpose in life. I’d been working my whole life and [now] I was doing nothing… I had a lot of time on my hands and I would ‘wake and bake’ and literally be stoned all day long….[I] was just stuck at home, getting high, watching TV and tweeting.”
Her crazy tweets at that time: “I’m really ashamed and embarrassed with the things I said. I can’t turn back time but if I could, I would. And I’m so sorry to whoever I hurt and whoever I lied about because it truly eats away at me. It makes me feel so horrible and sick to my stomach and sad. Everything I worked my whole life to achieve, I kind of ruined it all through Twitter.” But, she adds, “it’s definitely not Twitter’s fault — it’s my own fault.”
She’s sober: “I’ve been sober for almost four years now,” Bynes tells me, crediting her parents with “really helping me get back on track…. 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. 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. I actually am a nice person. I would never feel, say or do any of the things that I did and said to the people I hurt on Twitter. There are gateway drugs and thankfully I never did heroin or meth or anything like that but certain things that you think are harmless, they may actually affect you in a more harmful way. Be really, really careful because you could lose it all and ruin your entire life like I did.”
On the armchair psychiatrists: “It definitely isn’t fun when people diagnose you with what they think you are. That was always really bothersome to me. If you deny anything and tell them what it actually is, they don’t believe you. Truly, for me, [my behavior] was drug-induced, and whenever I got off of [drugs], I was always back to normal. I know that my behavior was so strange that people were just trying to grasp at straws for what was wrong,” Bynes concedes with clear-eyed analysis and remarkable consideration for these wannabe “armchair psychiatrists.”
I believe her, about everything. I think what happened to her was all drug-related, and once she got clean, everything in her life improved. I think “going away” helped her a great deal too – she’s barely been heard from in the past four years, and just getting that distance from her old self must have helped her enormously too. I always think that about the drugged out messes, that it’s not enough for them to just get clean, however briefly. It’s about taking the time away from their old lives, and getting some distance from their own toxic behavior. Anyway, this is a good success story of someone who got clean. Good for Amanda.
Cover & photos courtesy of Paper Magazine.
Wouldn’t it have been great if someone hauled Lindsay Lohan into drug rehab at that age. Having even halfway decent parents makes such a difference.
+100!!
Please, Lindsay had more opportunities to get sober than anyone. Oprah even tried to help her. While it would have been nice for Lindsay to have her parents support (many people have shitty parents and still straighten out their lives), she threw away her chances to become sober.
In the 90s, I had a pot dealer friend of my gal pals, she would “smoke us out” to test her product. Everyone had different reactions, like energetic or introspective. Mine was always paranoid. For some of us, pot -isn’t- medicinal, no matter the “grade”. Wish ppl would STOP pushing marijuana as some miracle, because for many of us, it’s neural poison!! I’m clean & sober 25yrs, and Amanda’s path is eerily similar to mine- I was embarrassingly strange….today I’m a good human being but sooo grateful social media wasn’t there to record actions impulses or otherwise!
not just her parents, it was HER. SHE wanted to get clean and get back to who she really was.
Lohan never wanted it. she was given opportunity after opportunity. even the Mighty O wanted to help. you don’t need “halfway decent parents” when you have Oprah (AND Tina Fey!) wanting to help you get clean. Lohan made poor choices and kept making poor choices, and continues to blame everyone but herself. Bynes seems to really get that SHE needed to make changes, and only blames herself.
I really hope she stays healthy. she was a pretty good comedic actress and she could still work in film.
I’m happy for her.
I almost cried , i am so happy for her. Such a great girl, she was on the edge of not coming back at all. All the best to her.
I can never think of Amanda and not think that there is so, so much she will never tell. I have no doubt that drugs played a big part of it, but I just always feel for any young women who came through Nick during the Schneider years. I can imagine the stories of them can tell.
yeah, the predation in H’wood is sickening. Too many parents see the $$$ and make that a priority over their kid’s safety.
There have been rumors that she was considering winding up to reveal things that Dan Schneider did to her back during her childhood time at Nickelodeon. I want to be cautious not to be insensitive here, but if that’s what is happening, then I would like to send her my warmest support.
The rumors about Dan Schneider seem to be more of a hoax than reality. CDAN is rape culture in blog format. I’ll never understand how people can cry feminism and ‘Believe Women’ one moment but then dehumanize women the next by deciding for them based on a sleazy, dishonest, misogynistic blog whether or not they were raped/trafficked, how it happened, nonconsensual and unverified rumors about sex work and abortion, etc,, and circulate that kind of toxic shit. Leave that kind of behavior to the deplorables, please. We’re better than that. That’s another part of the ‘armchair diagnosis’ that’s problematic.
I really agree that CDAN is a flaming garbage heap. It is 100% fanfic and not the fun kind. That said, some people like flaming garbage heaps so it’s the right site for them. Just not for me.
Rumors like those go way beyond CDAN though, and they’re only scratching the surface. It’s an open secret that Hollywood is chock full of predators, right up to the top. Weinstein and Singer are the least of them. I don’t think every story is true, but enough of them are for this to be a crisis.
I wasn’t talking about CDAN, i don’t read that website. Just like there has been an almost certain air of acceptance about Weinstein’s crimes for many decades, the same has been true of Spacey, Singer and Schneider. Some things are hard to keep completely under wraps forever.
I definitely believe Hollywood predators exist. With this particular situation though, no starlet has said or even hinted (like RoseM) that he did anything to her. People have taken it upon themselves to assume that every girl who has ever worked with this dude was raped/molested by him based on pretty flimsy evidence. What if it turns out that it was either false, or that he did victimize someone, but it’s not who or how people were thinking? People aren’t going to respond in a balanced way- they’ll just call anyone who says she wasn’t touched by him a liar.
I have a hard time believing this was just drugs – I’ve never known Adderall or marijuana to make you light your dog on fire or accuse your father of molesting you and implanting you with listening devices.
but I remember being really concerned about her when everyone still seemed to think it was funny, because it reminded me of Britney’s breakdown. she looks great and seems to be doing really well, and I’m happy for her.
She did say she tried other drugs as well though. Maybe it was the combo of a few at that time that did it.
Adderall is an amphetamine, it can absolutely make you lose your mind if your brain doesn’t need it already. She discusses faking her symptoms to get it and taking it crushed up, three at a time. that, combined with the fact that marijuana can affect people on the brink of psychosis in a way that effectively pushes them over the edge, makes me entirely believe her. She also mentions that she tried other drugs, but that these were the consistent ones she abused.
One of the scary things about pot use is if you have schizophrenia in your family history, pot can trigger the illness. It happened to a Dr friend’s son. She warned him before heading to college but it did no good and he was messed up for a few yrs. Dropped out and was aimless.
He’s so much better now. Stable with a family.
Dosing and dosage matter. Maybe lower amounts of an amphetamine wouldn’t necessarily make you act irrationally, but at high enough amounts and released in the instant form? Sure, I believe it.
idk, my mental illnesses don’t go much further than moderate anxiety and depression. in the past i’ve combined weed and adderall and i described the feeling as god mode. it feels like everything (squirrel running past the window, car alarm outside, etc) is happening because i’m somehow making it happen. i had that kind of psychotic symptoms just from mixing those drugs two or three times. abusing them both regularly with other drugs, not to mention the pressure of life in the public eye? i can absolutely see how it would cause the kind of issues she was having
Adderall is WILD. When I was In college (12 years ago) it was everywhere. I definitely overdid it for awhile. I lost 20lbs in 2 months and I also Kind of lost my mind. And I wasnt even taking it every day.
Her story is extremely relevant in this age of “pot is a miracle and you’re stupid to deny”. My son and I had food poisoning and a “friend” sent over candied pot. For a child and a sick mom? She knew full well I wasn’t a pot person, but was pushing it; pot people seem to WANT to be right. If pot is so awesome, why aggressively push the idea? Amanda wasn’t a full blown heroin user or boozer, so yes, her behavior was “weird”. She figured it out, and that’s the definition of sanity. Pot isn’t for everyone, and we need to realize it is truly is “gateway”, plus neurologically deranging for a huge portion of the population. Doesn’t mean she’s “broken to begin with” , cuz there are tons of broken toys laying around! I see a lot of judgeY posts here, but this woman is teaching us an huge lesson & cautionary tale.
I loved her as a kid, so it’s great to see her sober and on the mend emotionally. I really believe she’s learned a lot, hopefully that’ll help keep her healthy and happy.
So happy for her. It’s hard out here for child stars.
My heart is bursting for her. I’m so happy she’s doing better. She’s a talented woman and I love that she’s so reflective and focused now.
Erm, sorry, I don’t think so. I believe those reports of shizophrenia and bipolar depression. I think the addy, alcohol, and weed helped along her psychotic break but you can see she has levels of issues still. I’ve seen this merry-go-round in my bipolar support group-“I don’t have mental health issues, it was drugs!” It just sucks that “drug-induced” hysteria is something she thinks is easier to talk about than “self-medicating my schizo-typal disorder.”
Then you need to educate yourself. Google “drug-induced psychosis” or even “thc-induced psychosis.” They are very real. Drugs can absolutely precipitate psychosis or mental illness-like symptoms in people with vulnerabilities. Just because you have never heard of them does not mean it is not possible.
I’m skeptical too but I can only take her at her word. It’s hard to imagine marijuana and adderall made her do the stuff she was doing, especially for the length of time it was going on. It was like three years of that stuff. Maybe sleep deprivation played into it as well.
I wonder what drug she was on when she accidentally doused her dog in gasoline.
+1000
that was EXACTLY my thoughts as well. I suppose drug induced psychosis is possible, although it’s not common for that to last for years.
I’m just happy she seems to be doing well now.
She mentions that she took adderall and weed but doesn’t specifically say that’s all she took.
I agree with you. I think she doesn’t have a choice if she wants to work again though. Does any public figure ever came out with a mental illness diagnosis? I don’t think they can. Even Kanye backtracked and put it on drugs.
Drug induced psychosis exists. But hey, what do I know? Many actors have come out about their struggles with mental illness. Catherine Zeta Jones has Bipolar II, Mariah Carey has bipolar disorder as well.
CZJ’s career kind of stalled though, and Mariah Carey is a legend who haven’t a thing to prove anymore. So there’s that.
And the fact drug induced psychosis exists doesn’t mean she’s being honest here. But again, I don’t blame her.
Sassbr, I’m with you! She’s definetly on schizotypal spectrum, she is till very “off.” And marijuana can kick in latent schizophrenia. If she seems remotely sane, it’s because she’s surely on a cocktail of antipsychotics and is no longer doing street drugs. She was never bipolar. And even if there is increasing acceptance of being bipolar, schizophrenia has a long way to go…
LOL. The irony of her comment about armchair psychiatrists and your comment.
I know, right? I’m an ACTUAL psychiatrist and I don’t armchair diagnose when I can help (or resist) it (can’t help with Trump, though).
RIGHT?! Love people who diagnose celebs with mental illness. Most of whom have no background in psychology or psychiatry. And even in they do, then they have no business giving an assessment of someone they’ve never interacted with.
You can have suspicions and speculate, but to be like “oh she’s DEFINITELY x,y, and z” is just arrogant and irresponsible. And if she is and doesn’t want to talk about it, why push that narrative?
Well Bynes said herself what she was diagnosed with a few years ago. Some choose to believe her now she has a comeback narrative to sell and some choose to believe her then. With all due respect, your job is irrelevant and I don’t think you need to be that condescending.
Correction : The movie which she said put her in a funk is She’s the Man. ( Where she plays her own twin brother Sebastian while he is off in London )
I am glad she is on the mend emotionally and mentally, it is a struggle, and hopefully she will overcome it.
“A few months after walking away from Hall Pass, Bynes recalls attending a screening of her last film, Easy A, and ‘having a different reaction than everyone else to the movie.’ Not unlike her discomfort on the Hall Pass set, she elaborates that ‘I literally couldn’t stand my appearance in that movie and I didn’t like my performance. I was absolutely convinced I needed to stop acting after seeing it.'”
I felt really bad reading that because she did look very different in Easy A and I remember wondering what had happened.
Amanda Bynes acted in She’s the man, a movie which was loosely based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. To pursue her love for soccer, she switches schools and attends the one her twin Sebastian got into, he snuck out of school to go to London with his band.
Tl;dr Amanda Bynes portrayed the character of a boy, her twin in “She’s the man”.
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/11/217868/amanda-bynes-channing-tatum-shes-the-man-complex
I’ve ALWAYS have a soft spot for child actors…because I know the horrors that they have to navigate and deal with…and how SO MANY OF THEM…don’t come out of the other side…vital…well adjusted…or heck…even alive…
So I root for Amanda…who seems to have a solid family infrastructure that nurtured and supported her…which…as we can see…CAN make ALL the difference in the world!
Amanda’s article, which I read yesterday evening…was a refreshing palette cleaner after reading the well written article about Lena Durham…that article had me shaking my head and rolling my eyes…FOR DAYS!
I question how truly solid her family is when they were the ones pushing their child into work at a young age, pressuring her to keep going so they could continue to pull in the money. Putting that kind of responsibility on a child does not scream “we have her emotional interests at heart”.
I can’t believe Paper Magazine did an editorial with simple clothes and no neon lights! Lol but seriously, good for her. I believe her, too. She truly has been through Hell and back. And for the record, I thought she was great in Easy A.
I am so happy to read any story of ANY person who is either getting sober and/or getting treatment for mental health issues. Too many people don’t have the resources or the family to help them. Good for you Amanda.
It feels important to me that their “break the internet” issue this year doesn’t involve extreme sexuality, but rather an uplifting story about a strong woman, sobriety and mental health. I totally support that.
+1
This warms my heart.
I’ve been rooting for her for years – thank G-d she seems on the right track. What a blessing.
-Can we knock this “gateway drug” nonsense on the head, though? Reefer Madness is a thing of the long dead past, thank G-d.
I don’t want to be too hard on her because I feel very sorry for her for so many reasons but to me this article reeks of positioning to me…positioning for a Hollywood comeback attempt. She kept stressing it was mainly marijuana mixed with other things (I presume because she doesn’t want to be considered a liability any longer) and apologizing for past behavior is something a lot of clean and sober people do, but I just feel that a comeback attempt is imminent. I quit drinking in the last year very easily I might add, but I’ve realized that part of this success surely has to do with the fact that I moved out of state and I now have a very different lifestyle (I used to live in the city of Chicago and now I live in a smaller sized town in Tampa Bay) with less things to do and none of my childless friends live here (my friends without kids party much harder and have more money to spend on lavish events and parties) and I think that was key. Funny how I didn’t realize this until now. Anyway, I hope she is able to maintain her sobriety and keep her head up. It makes me sad that such a young person thinks she “ruined” her life.
She says right in the article that she wants to get back into acting.
The “ruined my life” stuff bothered me too. She’s so young, she can still do anything she wants. People love a good comeback story.
It doesn’t seem like she’s addressing the underlying issues that led to her problems to me, but maybe she just didn’t want to get into it in a magazine article. Fair enough! I too hope this works out for her. Too many child actors have been lost as it is.
I wish her parents would give her access to a little more of her cash so she doesn’t have to beg on twitter for uber fare to get home from school every night. I get you’re legally strapped Amanda-but regular joe’s on twitter are poor!
That’s most likely a fake account pretending to be Amanda because she got control of her finances back in May or June of 2017.
It’s fake. TMZ had a post a few months ago about her lawyers trying to shut down fake Twitter and Instagram accounts asking people for money.
I dunno dudes, it looks pretty real to me. Her Mom could easily be saying all of that.
Well facr its she got control of her finances last year there are documents about that so she has access to her money.
So you think it’s more likely that she is simultaneously giving these interviews about her health and secretly tweeting from a not-so-secret Twitter account that she needs money for Uber? That is more likely than a weirdo pretending to be her to scam naive and gullible people on the internet for money?
Marijuana can have a negative affect on people who suffer from mental illness. I can relate. I’m so glad she’s better now.
it absolutely can. i’m all for weed, medically, recreationally, whichever, but it’s not the best thing for all people. if someone is trying to fill a void inside, it can become a destructive habit. just like alcohol. it all depends on the person. my ex-husband let it take over his life, and that whole period of time has been the hardest of my life. not the weed’s fault, of course. but it didn’t help anything.
Agreed. Some people’s neurology and/or biochemistry does not mix well with pot. I’m glad she’s doing so well now, kudos to her and best wishes.
Agree! It IS true. If you have a predilection toward a mental illness, weed can uncover it when it might not have “formed”. That’s why they urge teens not to use while their brains are still forming. I think she was really honest and I hope this is food for thought for younger people. Good for Amanda.
oof, that lipstick tho — why did they extend it over the bow like that
She looks beautiful and happy and that makes me smile . I’m glad she’s doing okay now .
I will always root for Amanda and I hated how her breakdown was documented so publicly like Britney Spears. She is still under conservatorship like Britney. I don’t want to be unkind but that picture of her on the cover isn’t… the best. I believe her when she says she’s sober, I’ve seen her do a few online Youtube interviews and she seems clear eyed and coherent. But she seems a bit dead eyed in the header image. I also don’t believe her behavior was only due to drugs. Her incomprehensible Tweets and the fact she started a fire in a random stranger’s driveway suggest to me there’s more she’s not telling us (which is fine, she doesn’t owe us more than what she’s comfortable telling us). The fire is what caused her to be put under a 72 hour psychiatric hold in the first place and ended her string of bizarre behavior/social media posts once her parents were able to put under conservatorship. I also remember vaguely she may have relapsed along the way but she seems to be doing much better. I wish her the best.
Nothing but love and warm wishes for this young lady.
No, all of that was not mostly pot. No.
Doesn’t she still have her~secret~ Twitter page and she’s still posting wacky stuff? I think it was under the name Ashley banks and then she later changed to Persian 🤔😂
She accused her father and john travolta of abusing her under the secret Twitter page.
Ok, I’m not sure how I feel about this article. On the one hand, I’m aware that drug-induced psychosis is a very real thing. On the other hand… it takes a lot- a LOT- to get someone placed under conservatorship. And even more to keep that going for *years*- which it has been in her case. (I’m sorry, correct me if I’m wrong about her still being under conservatorship, but I believe she is- or at least she was last I heard.) So… I’m not totally sure I believe that it’s all as neat and tidy as it’s presented to us in this article. I think there was likely more going on with her than just drugs, and I don’t think it was as simple as “once I was clean I was back to myself”.
That said… she looks and sounds the best she has in years, and I’m so happy for her to see it. I loved her growing up, and she gave so much enjoyment to so many. It’s great to see her in what looks like the best place she’s been mentally in years. Long may she continue to have healthy peace and happiness with herself.
Amanda was legally granted financial control over her estate back in June or May of 2017. At that time Amanda mother still had conservatorship her “health and medical decision-making, but that too may have been lifted.
They extended the conservatorship three months ago to last until at least August 2020.
Thank you both! I’m glad to hear she has at least some elements of her life back in her own hands again, but the fact that she still remains under partial conservatorship only strengthens my thoughts that there’s a lot more to her story than this article would have us think.
Didn’t she get a bunch of plastic surgery during that time? How on earth did that get approved if she was so whacked out on drugs? That person shouldn’t have a license.
I was thinking this too. It makes me a bit sad to look at her face because none of the work she got done was good and it made her look slightly off. She had a lovely nose and her new nose is… Poor girl obviously had a lot if pain she was dealing with that was underlying her drug abuse and body dysmorphia and other problems. I hope that she’s been able to deal with it in the subsequent years.
Just looked at her secret Twitter and as I expected she’s still posting wacky stuff and trashing her parents lol
Those are fake accounts. Her lawyers have tried to shut them down. There have been stories about them. This TMZ story specifically mentions the fake Persian twitter account that you mentioned upthread:
http://m.tmz.com/#!2018/04/11/amanda-bynes-furious-instagram-twitter-fake-accounts/
I’m rooting for her! And, Amanda, if you read this please know that you were by far one of the best parts about Easy A. The whole ensemble was amazing.
I believe her and I’m glad she’s doing better.
My girls and I just loved her, The Amanda Show was so cute. I am so happy that she is headed in the right direction.
I read a book by Kurt Vonnegut’s son, called The Eden Express. It was about his schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder. Recreational drugs set him OFF, he was never the same. For some people marijuana is a real problem in how it interacts with brain chemistry.
Two of my friends (yes this is anecdotal) who have schizo-affective disorder can be completely symptom free, but if they smoke any weed at all they will lose their grip on reality sometimes for months. I saw one of them through it once and it was so scary and sad.
I am a daily smoker, light smoker, to keep myself moving with scoliosis pain and overall physical tension caused by that condition. I’m glad it’s a substance I can safely use long term. Every pharmaceutical recommended to help with my tension and pain has myriad ill affects and addictive possibility. I smoke daily but had no problem stopping for extended periods (pregnancies, breast feeding, having infants in general lol). It’s so different for everyone. People would assume a daily smoker would have a hard time stopping. I assumed it myself! But it was a mere annoyance for about three days getting used to not smoking… that’s it! And if our dealer doesn’t have any weed for a week or so I’m totally fine, just more achey and less able to be active those days.
So anyway I believe her that marijuana had an intense affect on her behavior. I also would think she has underlying mental health issues but that’s for her to tell or keep to herself.
wayyyyyyyy back in the day, my husband and I were hard drug users. (25 years sober!) one night , we were with friends and smoked a joint. It was my husbands first time with pot. I could not even handle his reaction to it. It was so over the top and soooo weird for me. I was like, “its pot! how are you acting this way?” strangest thing ever.
She is definitely on antipsychotics hence the weight she gained after her breakdown. I know because I am on them for bipolar and they suck. They make you super tired, not to mention hungry which is probably why she still looks a little glazy. Weed triggered my mental illness and I was out of it for months even after I stopped smoking. I am glad to see Amanda doing well but I think it would be better if she didn’t act again. It seems like she has body issues and being in the spotlight probably makes that a lot worse.
Not necessarily. So many starlets abuse Adderall to keep their weight down and when they stop, it can cause a lot of weight gain.
She looks great now (aside from the weird middle overlined lipstick on her cupid’s bow which all the youtubers do and think looks great) and I hope she can stay sober and take control of her life 🙂
Wishing you well Amanda!
She looks healthy (I covet her hair) and seems to be speaking with some insight/self-reflection. I feel for addicts attempting sobriety. Relapse is a natural part of it, but there is so much stigma and shame in it. If I were her I would stay clear of Hollywood/entertainment industry.
Pot recently became legal in Canada but the government includes warnings about using it while you are young as it can interact negatively with a developing brain. If she started taking it at 16, it could have triggered mental illness. Drug-induced phychosis is real.
If there is more to it, she has no obligation to make it public, especially if it might impact her insurability and employment. I don’t feel like we should speculate.
I am so rooting for her happiness!!!!!!