Hayden Panettiere Was Given ‘Happy Pills’ On The Red Carpet At 16-Years-Old

Hayden Panettiere has been open about her struggles with substance abuse as she transitioned from a child actress to a Hollywood adult. Now, the actress is tracing the roots of her addiction back to a pivotal moment when she was just 16 years old. In an exclusive clip from this week’s Red Table Talk on Facebook Watch, the 33-year-old actress recalled a time when people she trusted with her career and health led her down an inevitably dark path.

“Somebody who was on my team that I was working with came to me, and it was before this red carpet and I had been doing Heroes and we did press all the time and I was a little low-energy,” Panettiere told co-hosts Jada Pinkett Smith and Adrienne Banfield Norris, who are joined by guest host Kelly Osbourne.

It was, ‘Here, take one of these, it’s a happy pill, it’ll give you energy,’ so I didn’t think of it at the time as a bad thing or a drug.

Panettiere now believes the “happy pill” was something “similar to an Adderall,” a prescription stimulant, although she claims the medication was acquired from Mexico by a team member. “I should have thought, ‘That’s so sketchy,’ but I didn’t because I trusted the person,” Panettiere admits.

It did give me that little bit of energy and I didn’t feel like, high and out of control, but I did feel happy and like I was looking forward to doing interviews, yes.

Panettiere also claimed that she had no idea what was going on until she asked for more pills “for personal use” and another of her associates intervened. “They were to make me peppy during interviews,” Panettiere told People in July of the same pills offered to her. 

I had no idea that this was not an appropriate thing, or what door that would open for me when it came to my addiction.

Panettiere also discussed signing over full custody of her only child, 7-year-old daughter Kaya, to ex Wladimir Klitschko on Wednesday’s episode of Red Table Talk, calling it the “most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.” “Because of the way that it was done, it was very upsetting,” she says. “I mean, it was the worst signing those papers.”

I was gonna go work on myself, I was gonna get better, and when I got better then things would change and she could come to me and I could have my time with her. But that didn’t happen.

Red Table Talk, a Facebook Watch original series, releases new episodes every Wednesday at 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT. To get the latest updates, keep an eye on Thirsty.

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