AceShowbiz - Lindsay Lohan has vehemently denied allegations she has a drinking problem and is addicted to prescription pills - insisting she is no longer "young and irresponsible". The "Mean Girls" actress has endured a turbulent few years which culminated in a jail sentence last month for breaching her probation stemming from a 2007 DUI arrest.

The prison term came just weeks after a judge ordered her to be fitted with an alcohol-monitoring SCRAM ankle bracelet and she went straight to court-ordered rehab on her release. But in a newly-published interview with Vanity Fair magazine, conducted before her incarceration, the 24 year old is adamant she has never suffered from an addiction to alcohol or drugs.

She says, "If I were the alcoholic everyone says I am, then putting a (SCRAM) bracelet on would have ended me up in detox, in the emergency room, because I would have had to come down from all the things that people say I'm taking and my father says I'm taking - so that says something, because I was fine..."

"I've never abused prescription drugs. I never have - never in my life. I have no desire to. That's not who I am. I've admitted to the things that I've done - to, you know, dabbling in certain things and trying things 'cause I was young and curious and thought it was like, OK, 'cause other people were doing it and other people put it in front of me. And I see what happened in my life because of it."

Lohan blames her downfall on being a teenager in Hollywood with "a ton of money" and "no one" to stop her misbehaving, as well as associates who would "say they cared for the wrong reasons". She explains, "I think (things went wrong) the second I didn't have (structure) anymore - I was 18, 19 - with a ton of money and no one really here to tell me that I couldn't do certain things..."

But Lohan insists she is determined to turn her life around and become a "respected" actress again. She adds, "I want my career back. I want the respect that I had when I was doing great movies. And if that takes not going out to a club at night, then so be it. It's not fun anyway. I don't care what anyone says. I know that I'm a damn good actress... And I know that in my past I was young and irresponsible - but that's what growing up is. You learn from your mistakes."

In the same interview, Lindsay Lohan also says that she is convinced sexism is rife in Hollywood because female stars who misbehave are shunned, while their male counterparts "keep their deals." Lohan has struggled to land film roles during her troubled times, but she's convinced that if she was male, she would have been able to keep on working despite her personal problems. She said, "It's not OK. But they (men who misbehave) still keep their deals, they still keep their contracts, they still keep their roles, they still get their gigs."