Noah Cyrus Gets Candid About Her Addiction To Xanax And How The Struggle Was A "Dark Pit, Bottomless Pit"
She came onto the scene as Miley Cyrus's younger sister, but Noah Cyrus has generated a name for herself in addition to a successful music career. She recently opened up about her struggles along her way to fame.
Noah's whole family is used to dealing with fame. They all became household names when Miley starred in the wildly popular Disney show Hannah Montana. Early on in her career, Noah says people would come up to her and ask if she was Hannah Montana's or Miley's younger sister. "I did not like that, and it stripped me of my own identity for a long time," she admitted in a recent interview with Rolling Stone. Noah also got candid about her addiction to prescription drugs and how it affected her life.
Noah Cyrus Gets Candid about Her Addiction to Xanax
It's certainly not uncommon to see celebrities struggle with alcohol or drug addiction, but not all of them are open about their battle. Noah opened up to Rolling Stone and shared that she tried a Xanax for the first time when she was only 18 years old. She wasn't into the party drugs like ecstasy, but there was something about downers that was attractive to her.
“I think I wanted to fit in with him. I wanted to be what he wanted and what he thought was cool and what I thought everybody was doing," she said. “Once I felt that it was possible to silence things out for a second and numb your pain, it was over."
Benzodiazepines have become more and more popular and accessible over the last few years, and there are a few musicians and rappers who have been open about their addiction to these types of pills. Lil Xan's whole stage name is a nod to Xanax, and Noah dated him for a while. Rapper Lil Peep tragically died at the age of 21 after falling asleep with fentanyl and Xanax in his system.
It was extremely easy to keep her addiction going. Noah says she was "surrounded by people who were easily able to get it by buying it from people," and her friends kept enabling her addiction. Her lifestyle started to suffer immensely; she would sleep all day long and wake up in the late evening and she even had trouble keeping track of what day of the week it was. When coronavirus lockdowns were first enacted in 2020, that's when she was at the height of her battle with Xanax.
“It just kind of becomes this dark pit, bottomless pit,” she admitted. She forced herself to get back into a normal lifestyle when her grandmother passed away in August 2020. Noah "felt so guilty" for not being present both physically and emotionally. "I was not there," she said. "I couldn't be."
“That was my big eye-opener: I was sitting alone, and I was scared, and I realized that all the people that I love and all the people that I need, I was the one pushing them away,” she continued.
Noah says the first few months of her recovery were rough, but she got through them, and her latest album called The Hardest Part was created out of the anguish and battle she experienced getting clean.
Today, she takes herself to therapy and spends lots of time with her two dogs. “I wake up in the mornings, and I’m able to look in a mirror and go on about my day without hating myself,” she said. “I’m able to comfort myself and nurture myself.”