Corey Feldman Reveals How 'Dangerous' Stage Mom 'Sucked The Life From' Him During Torturous Childhood — Read His Book Excerpt

"As the family breadwinner, Mindy was granted a wide berth by my parents," Corey writes. Unfortunately, he was not so lucky.

Trapped at home with his mom while his older sister worked, Feldman describes how Sheila "was down, relegated to the confines of her bedroom, suffering from a mysterious range of maladies. In those days, I was too young to anticipate the high-highs and low-lows of someone with a depressive disorder, or to successfully navigate the unpredictable, violent swings that are born of substance abuse. I just thought she needed my help."

Sheila often called Corey in to rub her feet or brush her hair, he claims. "She would cry and fidget and whine and sometimes scream and fume and kick …." he writes. "Those were the worst days, when her moods became like black holes, sucking the life from every corner of the house into that cold, dark, room."

He admits, "She was beautiful, but as I sensed even then, somehow dangerous."

Banned from having friends over and from leaving the house, Corey says he often zipped himself inside a leather suitcase to avoid her wrath. But sometimes he couldn't escape.

Corey describes the painful experience of having Sheila bleach his hair with peroxide so he could hopefully get more roles. "My mother is alternately scrubbing my scalp with her fingers and shoving my face under the faucet of the bathroom sink," he remembers. "The peroxide burns and the smell is making me nauseous, but apparently, I was supposed to have been a blond-haired, blue-eyed child. Instead, she got stuck with me … 'This is who you were supposed to be,' she keeps telling me …"

Further attempts to mold Corey into a perfect child star included locking him in his bedroom to learn songs, he claims. "'You're going to sing a song and they're going to go, isn't he cute?' she tells me, before locking me in my room with Mindy's record player and instructions not to come out until I have learned every word," Corey writes. But his efforts did not impress, and Sheila let him know it.

"It's clear that she enjoys making fun of me," he remembers. "It's obvious that she finds pleasure in making me feel inadequate."

Even as Corey booked more and more jobs, the critiques continued, with his mother focusing in on his weight. He claims she hid his favorite cookies, crackers, snacks, and cereals on high shelves, allowing only Mindy to eat them. And when Corey questioned why, he says she answered, "Because Mindy isn't fat."

"I do have round, chubby, cherubic cheeks, but I always thought that I would grow into them," he writes. "Now she tells me that if I'm not careful, I'll grow up to be a fat, disgusting pig … She lifts my shirt and pinches a fold of skin between her fingers." He also claims she even force-fed him diet pills at one point.

"Soon," he writes, "there is a new rule: No eating at all until she wakes up. This is especially challenging because sometimes she stays in bed until two or three in the afternoon. I distract myself with toys …"