Lena Dunham celebrates six-months sober after getting addicted to anti-anxiety medication

Lena Dunham has admitted to misusing a drug that ‘made her feel like the person she was supposed to be.’

The 32-year-old is celebrating six months clean of the anti-anxiety medication Klonopin after becoming dependent on the pills ‘to free herself’ for public engagements and appearances.

Klonopin is a benzodiazepine commonly used for panic disorders, and also seizures, but warnings suggest it should only be consumed in small doses.

‘I’ve been sober for six months,’ Lena confessed on comedian 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’d know I needed to do it, and when I took a Klonopin, I could do it.’

Lena went on to explain how the drug became something she took ‘whenever she was awake’, to deal with traumatic experiences in her past.

‘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.’

The Girls actress and comedy writer revealed in her book Not That Kind Of Girl that she was raped while attending Oberlin college, although she didn’t identify the attack as rape at first.

She wrote that while drunk and high on a cocktail of Xanax and cocaine, she met a student who led her to a parking lot.

There he sexually assaulted her, but afterwards she went back to his apartment, where the man proceeded to have sex with her, and he attempted to remove his condom twice.

Meanwhile in 2018, Lena has been overcoming the physical side effects of having her left ovary removed, following a hysterectomy in February.

She recently explained that the surgery left her intimate parts burning with pain, on top of the psychological impact of never being able to carry a child.

Lena says she has been seeking therapy since she was seven years old, and this year marks her 25th year of psychological help.

MORE: Cardi B claims she was offered Little Mix’s Woman Like Me before Nicki Minaj as bitter feud rumbles on

MORE: Halsey uses G-Eazy lookalike in Without Me music video about toxic relationships