Mena Suvari opens up about meth addiction in new memoir: 'Slowly but surely it became my life'

Mena Suvari is widely remembered for her roles in American Beauty (1999) and the first two American Pie movies, but the 42-year-old actress remembers that time of her life for very different reasons.

Suvari's memoir, The Great Peace (Hachette Books), released today (July 27), and Cosmopolitan exclusively shared the chapter titled "Meth Month." You would be safe in presuming that it dives into a meth addiction that Suvari had as a teenager.

Here is a particularly revealing excerpt:

"Slowly but surely it became my life. And then it took over my life. The hours I was at school were spent thinking about getting out of school and doing some lines. I stayed up until late at night, slept a couple hours, then repeated the day. Before long I was pulling out my small gold lacquered butterfly embossed compact mirror and snorting a line in the school bathroom during a break. Later, I sat up all night playing eclectic indie rock on a large old-school boombox recorder Gabby had given me. 

"A part of meth made me hyper-aware, but there was that other part that was like the dark side of the road, and it led directly to paranoia. I spent a lot of the night waiting to hear whether anyone was going to knock on my bedroom door. While I maintained my grades, my health suffered. My entire back broke out in acne. I’d always had perfect skin. I knew it was the meth. And just like before with the birth control offered in exchange for no questions asked, I was given antibiotics to make it 'go away.'"

Suvari is just as forthright about the sexual abuse she endured from 12 to 20 years old—a part of the book exclusively excerpted to People.

During a sit-down with Good Morning America that aired Tuesday (July 27), Suvari discussed the double life and confusing relationship she had with fame once American Beauty and American Pie "catapulted" her into mainstream consciousness: