Child Stars Do Not Fall Apart By Accident, They Fall Apart By Design

Growing up, we were warned about the stranger at the school fence. The shadowy figure who would offer us sweets laced with something sinister, who would introduce our innocent young minds to the horrors of narcotics through a chain-link boundary. I am still waiting for that man. What actually happens is much less cinematic and more insidious, and it starts not at a fence but inside the developing brain of a child who has been placed, by the adults around them, in a situation their neurology was never designed to handle.

Bored Panda spoke to psychiatrists, addiction specialists, and clinical directors about what actually happens at a molecular level when a young person encounters substances, and the answer has very little to do with peer pressure, bad influences, or moral failure.

Hayden Panettiere was sixteen when it started. Ahead of a red carpet event for Heroes, someone on her own team handed her a pill to manage her exhaustion. Not a stranger in a coat and a trilby trying to lure in a new customer. Someone who was supposed to be looking after her.

“Within minutes, a wave of energy washed over me, like I’d just woken up from the most refreshing night’s sleep of my life,” she wrote in her memoir. She called it the gateway substance that ushered her toward the good of pharmaceuticals and the downfall of addiction. She died at 36, one of the less lucky ones who follow a disturbing pattern from child star to troubled adult.