The Amanda Bynes Train Wreck Is Back Again, Following a New DUI Arrest
Just when you had almost forgotten about her year-long descent to rock bottom, Amanda Bynes, who had seemed healthy and happy following a rehab stint, was arrested for a DUI.
Lucas Jackson/Reuters
It looked like the train wreck had finally been cleaned up.
Just shy of one year after checking out of a rehab facility, it seemed like Amanda Bynes was doing well. She was allegedly sober. She was taking classes at the FIDM Fashion Institute’s Orange County campus. The discount costume wig bin hadn’t been visited in months, it had seemed.
But like a former child star Godzilla raring to lay waste to the carefully rebuilt structure in her life—or, less metaphorically, like an addict—Bynes just went and wrecked it all again.
TMZ reports that 28-year-old starlet-turned-tabloid-fascination was arrested in Los Angeles on Sunday and booked for a DUI. She’s since posted $15,000 bail.
Bynes was reportedly driving her Mercedes in the San Fernando Valley when she stopped for a red light in the middle of an intersection. A police officer suspected that she was under the influence of a drug after she failed a series of field sobriety tests. (And also probably because this fool stopped at a red light in the middle of an intersection.) An “informed” source tells TMZ that the drug in question is apparently weed, which, yep…makes sense.
A case could be made that Bynes was, in effect, a ticking time bomb.
Back at the height of her crazed year, the actress was put under a 5150 hold, an involuntary psychiatric hold that was mandated after she allegedly started a fire in the driveway of a stranger’s home, babbled utter nonsense to police when questioned, and her behavior was considered the result of a possible mental disorder and a danger to herself or others.
Of course, the fire incident wasn’t the lone factor suggesting that Bynes might be a menace: the parading around in ratty wigs, drastic plastic surgeries, alarming series of car accidents, reports of drug use, and a bizarre, relentless insistence that anyone who bothered her was “ugly” also raised a few eyebrows. As they would.
In the wake of the 5150 hold, she underwent treatment at a hospital and rehab facility and her parents were granted temporary conservatorship over her affairs. That conservatorship expired, however, this month and, almost immediately a source tells TMZ, “Things started going haywire.”
Having moved from her parents’ home to her own Orange County apartment, Bynes had begun smoking weed again, which seems to be a behavioral trigger for the star. Her reign as Hollywood’s misbehaving court jester pretty much took place in a permanent cloud of marijuana smoke.
The most infamous incident took place in May 2013, when a doorman at her apartment building called the cops after spotting Bynes wandering the lobby with a joint, mumbling erratically to herself. When the police arrived at Bynes’ apartment and opened her door, a thick, skunkish-smelling cloud of smoke enveloped them immediately.
She promptly chucked her bong out of her 36th-floor apartment window, shouted, “Don’t you know who I am?,” and was quickly arrested on charges of reckless endangerment, tampering with evidence, and criminal possession of marijuana. She arrived in court the next day wearing a platinum blonde wig, as if Cousin It had dressed as Malibu Barbie for Halloween.
The accounts of Bynes’ peculiar behavior typically involved reports of marijuana usage during her year-long meltdown. We can’t be sure, obviously, but a bizarre, oddly transfixing Twitter video titled “I’m Sucking on a Sour Patch Kid Listening to Music Getting Ready for Tonight :D” may have been posted after a bong hit or two. Just a hunch!
All of this makes this most recent arrest, reportedly marijuana-related again, all the more depressing. Back in April, Bynes’ attorney, Tamar Arminak, made public statements addressing his client’s recovery and struggles. “Amanda currently is on zero medication,” Arminak said. “She’s devoted to living her life as healthy as possible. She’s never had a history of abusing alcohol or hard drugs, and she’s proud to say she’s been marijuana-free for the past nine months.”
Well, as they say, all records are made to be broken.
This recent DUI arrest is especially problematic for Bynes. She is on three years’ probation, stemming back to her 2012 DUI arrest. Being arrested for driving high? Yeah…that’s a violation.
Bynes is back in the news again then, and for all the wrong reasons. Does that mean the train wreck is back? It is too soon to say. But, as we do with such things, we won’t be able to stop watching.