Drew Barrymore and Madison Beer Opened Up About Attempting Suicide

Drew Barrymore and Madison Beer shared their stories of attempting suicide, bonding over the shared experience and hoping to let viewers tuning into The Drew Barrymore Show know that help is available and that recovery is possible for people having suicidal ideation. In the latest episode, Beer stopped by and recounted her experience with trying to take her own life — twice. Barrymore offered her an understanding ear as well as a way for her to tell her fans and followers that she's better now and that it took hard work and determination for her to move away from thinking about ending her own life.

"I got to the point that things caught up with me that I had never acknowledged, I never wanted to face. I feel like I was sort of putting on this façade and living this role I had been assigned for so long and it all caught up to me one day and then one day turned into weeks and months and, honestly, I feel like it was at least year that I was always in this sort of, like, suicidal ideation mindset," Beer said. 

Barrymore made sure that Beer felt safe to share her story, letting her know that people struggle with different things that are hard to discuss.

"Everybody struggles, so I related on levels that are difficult to talk about and I want to thank you because you’re discussing stuff right now that I want to make you feel safe about because I've been there," Barrymore said. "So when you were struggling there was attempts at escaping life, tell me about that."

"It felt very normal to me to think about that at the end of every day, and then that wasn’t until I ended up actually making an attempt. It was, thankfully, obviously unsuccessful," Beer explained. "I don’t know, it just all became too much and that’s when I also decided, 'OK, clearly there’s something more for me to live for.' I wasn't successful and I want to do something with that. I want to be able to say I made the choice to live and, what am I gonna do now? What does that mean?"

Beer went on to say that she had to have therapy every day and reconcile with a lot of trauma from her childhood in order to move forward and away from thinking about suicide.

"I think my biggest thing though was I started doing a lot of inner child work, I started healing the little girl in me very seriously and that was something I dove in head first. I was like this has to be what I start with, I have to start at the beginning of where I feel like this pain is coming from," Beer added. "So, I really took that seriously, I went on a couple mental health retreats. I did therapy every single day of the week. I just really committed to getting better, whatever better even means. I started to love myself the same way I try to love other people."

Barrymore has been open about her suicide attempt at age 13. After she tried to take her own life as a teenager, Barrymore's mother had her hospitalized and she spent a year and a half under psychiatric care. She noted that it wasn't anything like what people imagining a celebrity being admitted to a mental health facility to be. It was, she explained, not glamorous.

"My mom put me in a place that was, like, a full psychiatric ward," Barrymore said during a 2021 interview with Howard Stern. "I used to laugh at those Malibu 30-day places … a little spa vacation for 30 days in Malibu was the opposite of the experience I had."

After their talk, Beer and Barrymore shared a sweet moment, offering each other support and acknowledging how far they'd come from some of the darkest moments in their lives.

"I love you," Barrymore said. "Everything you just said, what an incredible roller coaster of real productiveness in seeking help, in self-awareness, in giving grace to others, realizing you’re not giving it to yourself ... and I applaud that because you never have to be fake or anyone but you."

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or text Crisis Text Line at 741-741.