Why Was Drew Barrymore Legally Emancipated at ONLY 14-Year-Old?

Drew Barrymore was legally emancipated at the tender age of 14. In other words, she legally separated from her mother before she turned 18— forever lawfully relieving her mom of her responsibilities to care for her. Why did Barrymore become emancipated? As it turns out, her mom wasn’t really mothering her to begin with.

Drew Barrymore’s Mom Was Partying With Her When She Was a Kid

“I had a mom, but she was more like my best friend,” Barrymore explained in 2018 while on Norm MacDonald Has a Show. “She was like, ‘Do you want to go to school and get bullied all day, or do you want to go to Studio 54?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, absolutely!’” she told the late comedian.

Barrymore noted that the Hollywood scene for young child stars often leads to chaos and debauchery. “It’s sad that there’s this weird alchemy about kids doing this line of work that f*** all of them up,” she said of the fame. “And I’m no different.”

Barrymore Cites Zero Parental Boundaries as One Reason for Emancipating

Barrymore once told Howard Stern that her mother essentially set zero boundaries for her as a child. Because her mom was inviting her out to clubs, Barrymore said she became a party animal by the time she was 13. She’d been introduced to drugs and alcohol, attempting rehab by the age of 12 and then falling off the wagon.

Barrymore told The Guardian, “I really had a fear that I was going to die at 25.” But she also said she somehow had an innate sense of her own boundaries that kept her from going too far. “No matter how dark shit got, I always had a sense that there should be goodness,” she said. “I never went all the way into darkness. There were so many things I could have done that would have pushed me over the edge and I just knew not to go there.”

Then her mother suddenly sent Barrymore away to a bootcamp-style mental institution for 18 months.

“I hated it at first,” Barrymore told Howard Stern. “I had nothing but freedom up until that point. Dancing on tables at Helena’s and Studio 54 and Limelight and every club on the planet. Partying it up, doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. And all of a sudden, it was, ‘You have no freedom. You will figure out your life. And you have the best insurance policy ever, so you’re staying here until we tell you you’ve changed.’”

Bootcamp Mental Institution Provided Much Needed Rules, Saved Her Life

Barrymore said it was incredibly hard but ultimately, the bootcamp saved her life. She says that she came out of it completely changed and as a different, humble person.

“It was so upsetting at first. But over the course of that year and a half, I left there like, the most humble person you could ever imagine… They saved my life.”

Stern pointed out that the camp was “the parent she needed” because they provided rules and regulations.

The mental institution worked side-by-side with the emancipation program, so its goal was to give people the tools they needed to survive and thrive when they returned to the world. Barrymore says that it worked, and that by the time she was 14, she’d gotten everything out of her system.

Barrymore Lived, Toured With David Crosby

Upon release from the program, Barrymore set a cordial court date to emancipate from her mom. She says that they shook hands on the agreement. From there, she went to live with David Crosby (of Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young) for a couple of months. While she toured with the artists, she said they were like parental figures, setting curfews and making sure she stayed on-track.

Now, Barrymore has two daughters of her own. She tries to raise them with a raised awareness of what not to do. At the same time, she told Stern that she’s reconnected with her mother, Jaid Barrymore, and that the two have worked on healing their relationship.

“I’m really glad there is healing there,” she told Stern. “I feel goodness toward my mom.”

Barrymore wrote about her relationship with her mother in detail in her 2015 memoir, Wildflower. You can read an excerpt, courtesy of The Guardian, here.