Portrait of an Addict as a Young Blogger

Cat Marnell, the 29-year-old beauty director and health critic at xoJane.com, has created internet buzz by openly discussing her drug use in her popular beauty blog. “Why am I not talking about drugs if I’m taking them every day? People can say that’s pathetic, but it’s one of my main hobbies," she tells New York magazine in their popular "Minutes with __" segment. In Marnell's blog, the most-read column on the site, she discusses lipstick and hair products amid rambling diatribes and overt references to drugs. She also makes some thinly-veiled references to 12-step programs, and defends her drug use on the grounds that "I've never hurt—I'm not hurting anybody—but myself." Her dark past has included stints in mental hospitals, but she says her job and love of beauty products have helped her pull herself together. “I’m bad all of the time, and beauty products are fixing me,” she says. Marnell was "troubled and clearly high" during her recent NYMag interview, and popping the stimulant Vyvanse from a ziplock bag in her purse. She confessed that xoJane.com's publishers have urged her to go to rehab, but the drug-addled blogger is resistant. "Why do I have to clean up?" she asks. "It’s time to question the idea that everybody has to live a certain kind of life.”