Zac Efron and his easy-to-get-lost-in baby blues cover the new issue of The Hollywood Reporter, which lands on the eve of the release of his new film 'Neighbors,' which hits the multiplex on May 9. In the feature, the hunky actor came clean about his drug and alcohol issues, that fight on Skid Row in L.A. and his career.

Take a minute to gawk at that pretty face. Go ahead. Get it over with. We'll wait.

Now, let's get down to the nitty gritty, shall we?

"I was drinking a lot, way too much," he said about his substance abuse issues, adding that he did drugs, too. The actor reportedly went to rehab, was seen with a sobriety medal and then there were suspected relapses.

He mused, "I mean, you’re in your 20s, single, going through life in Hollywood, you know? Everything is thrown at you."

Even so, Efron is not remorseful, just a whole heck of a lot wiser. "I wouldn’t take anything back; I needed to learn everything I did. But it was an interesting journey, to say the least," he said.

"No matter who you are, you face challenges growing up," he also stated. "You go with your things, you learn, you have to. It's impossible to lead an honest and fulfilling life as a man and not make mistakes and 'fess up to them when you need to. But it's especially humiliating when they happen to be so public and so scrutinized."

Wow. We're impressed. Zac sounds like a man who messed up, copped to it and is ready to move on stronger and empowered.

He also abused as a coping mechanism and his life began to change drastically, saying, "Slowly but surely, I was no longer living in my house. It was just hotel to hotel."

His lifestyle spiraled out of control and he shut friends out, chalking his behavior up to the pursuit of art. "I hadn’t seen any of my very close friends in months," the actor confessed. "I didn’t realize how incredibly isolated I had become. I had a fantastic excuse to put myself at ease, which was: ‘It’s for the work. It’s for the art. You should be lonely when you’re working like this. That’s what artists do.'"

Efron called his battles a "never-ending struggle" although he is "happier and healthier" than ever. That, Efronites, is good news.

Efron, who dated former 'High School Musical' co-star Vanessa Hudgens, affirmed that he is single, so scratch those Halston Sage dating rumors.

Ok, so Skid Row. Can we talk about that?

Turns out Zac, 26, did discuss the sketched out and ultimately embarrassing incident that found him fighting with transients in a shady part of town. Many believed he was on the hunt for drugs, given the circumstances, where he said he and a friend ran out of gas, in a bad part of town, while on their way to get sushi after midnight on a Sunday.

"A homeless guy, or vagrant, tapped on the driver’s-side window," Efron recalled about the event he deemed "the most terrifying moment in my life." Well, yeah…

He continued, "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."

The fact that he was living so fluidly, going from hotel to hotel, does support the idea of cruising for food on a Sunday night. But it's still a cray story.

Whatever the case, it SOUNDS like Zac Efron is getting back to a good place and he won't be another Hollywood casualty.

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