In the new issue of The Hollywood Reporter Zac Efron opens up about his struggle with substance abuse. “I was drinking a lot, way too much,”; he reveals. “I mean, you’re in your 20s, single, going through life in Hollywood, you know? Everything is thrown at you. I wouldn’t take anything back; I needed to learn [from] everything I did. But it was an interesting journey, to say the least.”;

According to Efron, it was the stress of doing three movies in a row that set him on the path to addiction. “I had done films back-to-back-to-back. I was burnt out,”; he says. “[Work] started to become the reason to go anywhere, the reason to talk to anybody. The phone calls I received were regarding [work], the ones I wanted to make were regarding scripts or to producers. Slowly but surely, I was no longer living in my house. It was just hotel to hotel. So my hobbies went out the window. […] There was something lacking, some sort of hole that I couldn’t really fill up.”;

During this period, Efron stopped seeing friends and became more and more dependent on alcohol and drugs to get through the day. “I was just so deep into my work, it was really the only thing I had. I clung to it in a way that became a little bit destructive,”; he says.

His addiction eventually reached the point where he felt the need to join Alcoholics Anonymous and see a therapist. “I just started going,”; he says of the AA meetings. “And I think it’s changed my life. I’m much more comfortable in my own skin. Things are so much easier now.”; Even so, Efron describes his battle with addiction as “a never-ending struggle.”;

Elsewhere in the Hollywood Reporter“s profile, Efron talks about his much-publicized fight with a group of homeless men in L.A.’s Skid Row last month.

“I had a friend come pick me up late at night—we were looking for a place downtown to get a bite and catch up,”; he says. “We were having trouble finding somewhere—a lot of places were closed—and the car ran out of gas off the 110. It was ridiculous. We had to pull over, and I called Uber.”;

While waiting for the cab to arrive, “a homeless guy, or vagrant, tapped on the driver’s-side window. Before I knew it, he [the friend] was out of the car, and they started fighting. I saw that [the homeless man] was carrying some sort of a knife, or shank, and I got out of the car to disarm him. At some point, he dropped the knife, and I got hit pretty hard in the face—and almost instantly the police were there to break up the fight.”; No charges were filed and Efron and his friend went straight home. Efron describes the ordeal as “the most terrifying moment in my life.”;

For the full Hollywood Reporter profile, click here.