Noah Cyrus, younger sister of Miley and a budding recording artist whose debut album comes out in September, is opening up about what a Xanax addiction did to her life when she began abusing the drug as a teenager.
Now in recovery, Cyrus said she tried Xanax-the drug alprazolam, an anti-anxiety medication that is part of the class of drugs known as benzodiazepines-when she was 18. "My boyfriend at the time, when I was 18, was the first person that gave me a Xanax, and it became a way for us to bond," she told Rolling Stone. "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. Once I felt that it was possible to silence things out for a second and numb your pain, it was over."
Though she didn't mention him by name, her boyfriend at that time was the rapper Lil Xan, who as you may have guessed from his moniker, also heavily used the drug. He revealed in 2021 that after attempting to quit the medication "cold turkey," he went into withdrawal and suffered multiple seizures.
For Noah Cyrus, addiction led her to falling asleep during a press event. "I was completely nodding off and falling asleep, and unable to keep my head up or keep my eyes open, because I was so far gone," she said. "It just kind of becomes this dark pit, bottomless pit."
When she lost her grandmother in August 2020, she realized that her drug use was keeping her from being fully present with her family, and it seems that's when she decided to seek help. "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 said, adding that after some time, she began the recovery process as well as the process of channeling her feelings into her first album, The Hardest Part.
"I'm not trying to be, like, any spokesperson for recovery or anything like that. I, myself, am just going through it and figuring it out," the now 22-year-old said. "I wake up in the mornings, and I'm able to look in a mirror and go on about my day without hating myself. I'm able to comfort myself and nurture myself."