Noah Cyrus, 22, has been recovering from an addiction to Xanax for the past two years, she revealed in a new interview with Rolling Stone. “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,” the singer said in the interview, published on July 5. “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.” Noah added, “Once I felt that it was possible to silence things out for a second and numb your pain, it was over.”
Miley Cyrus‘ sister explained that she was “surrounded by people” who easily obtained Xanax for her and “kind of cosigned” her drug abuse. “It just kind of becomes this dark pit, bottomless pit,” Noah said. By 2020, the “Make Me (Cry)” hitmaker was so addicted to Xanax that she fell asleep doing press for her EP The End of Everything. “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,” Noah recalled.
But everything changed for Noah when her grandmother Loretta Jean “Mammie” Palmer passed away in August 2020. Noah explained that, because of the drugs, she was distant from her family and couldn’t grieve with her mom Tish Cyrus. “I felt so guilty for not being there when my grandma died. I was there physically, but emotionally, I was not there. I couldn’t be,” Noah said. “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 added.
As for her ongoing recovery process, Noah told Rolling Stone, “I was being helped by everybody that I needed help from, and it took some time to get on my own two feet.” The Grammy Award nominee also shared how she incorporated her struggles with drugs in her music, which includes her upcoming debut album, The Hardest Part, which comes out September 16.
“It was coming out in my lyrics. So, it’s like, ‘I’m not going to hide my truth.’ I think it was evident that I was going through something the past couple years — I think my fans saw it,” Noah said in the interview. “I think the public could see it.”