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Lena Dunham Is Six Months Sober After 'Misusing Benzos'

Lena Dunham Is Six Months Sober After 'Misusing Benzos'

Lena Dunham revealed that she’s six months sober after “misusing” Klonopin, an anti-anxiety drug.

“I’ve been sober for six months,” the 32-year-old actress said on Dax Shepard‘s podcast Armchair Expert. “My particular passion was Klonopin.”

“I was having crazy anxiety and having to show up for things that I didn’t feel equipped to show up for. But I know I need to do it, and when I take a Klonopin, I can do it,” she explained, adding that, “It stopped being ‘I take one when I fly,’ to ‘I take one when I’m awake.’ “

“I didn’t have any trouble getting a doctor to tell me, ‘No you have serious anxiety issues, you should be taking this. This is how you should be existing,’” Lena continued. “I was diagnosed with pretty serious PTSD. I have a few sexual traumas in my past and then I had all these surgeries and then I had my hysterectomy after a period of really extreme pain. It stopped feeling like I had panic attacks and it started feeling like I was a living panic attack. The only thing that was notable was the parts of the day where I didn’t feel like I was going to barf and faint.”

“If I look back, there were a solid three years where I was, to put it lightly, misusing benzos, even though it was all quote unquote doctor prescribed,” she added.

“Nobody I know who are prescribed these medications is told, ‘By the way, when you try and get off this, it’s going to be like the most hellacious acid trip you’ve ever had where you’re f—– clutching the walls and the hair is blowing off your head and you can’t believe you found yourself in this situation.’ Now the literal smell of the inside of pill bottles makes me want to throw up,” Lena said. “I still feel like my brain is recalibrating itself to experience anxiety,” she explained. “I just feel literally on my knees grateful every day.”

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Posted to: Lena Dunham