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Stacey Dash at the 2016 Oscars. (ABC/Twitter)

Get ready for a whole lot of Stacey Dash.

The actress and Fox News contributor is headline fodder once again, but this time, it's partly for stories of abuse and addiction from her own past.

Talking to People magazine for a story to promote the release of her upcoming memoir, "There Goes My Social Life: From Clueless to Conservative," Dash, an alumnus of Paramus High School known for her role in the 1995 movie "Clueless," recalls using a gun to defend herself against an ex-boyfriend.

Dash says that almost 25 years ago, the boyfriend, who she did not name, physically abused her on a regular basis when she was in the relationship. Later, after she had broken up with the man, he raped her at gunpoint while her young son from a relationship with singer Christopher Williams slept nearby. She fired her gun at her ex-boyfriend and missed, but the shots scared him away.

"A gun saved my life," Dash said. "That's why my Second Amendment right will not be taken away from me."

The sometimes controversial Fox News contributor also told the magazine that when she was growing up in the South Bronx, she was molested when she was 4 years old by a family member and abused drugs starting when she was 16.

"I couldn't find happiness," she said. "It got to a point where I didn't even want to live anymore. The voice in my head was saying, 'There's nothing here for you.'"

Dash also described almost having an abortion but changing her mind.

"When I got pregnant, I was doing a lot of drugs and I didn't want to live," she said. "I wanted to die. I was going to have an abortion. I was crying and I said to God, 'Please tell me what to do.' And God told me, 'Keep your son.' I ripped the IV out of my arm and I said, 'I'm keeping my son.'"

The actress and TV host addressed the controversy that resulted in her starring in a bit with host Chris Rock at the 2016 Academy Awards as the Academy's new "director of minority outreach." In her role as a Fox contributor, Dash, when commenting on the lack of diversity in the Oscar nominations that caused some to call for a boycott of the show, panned Black History Month and the BET Awards.

"When I say there should not be a BET channel or a Black History Month, I'm saying we deserve more," Dash told the magazine. "I just hope people understand that I'm not judging; I'm coming from experience."

But Dash, who plays the mayor of Chicago in the upcoming "Sharknado" sequel "The 4th Awakens," continued to raise eyebrows, this time with her comments on transgender people and bathrooms. When asked on Wednesday about a passage in her book that criticizes Caitlyn Jenner, a fellow conservative, for using women's bathrooms, Dash -- who supports a North Carolina law that requires transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond with their birth sex -- didn't hold back.

"It's tyranny by the minority," she told Entertainment Tonight. "Why do I have to suffer because you can't decide what you wanna be that day?" Dash said.

"OK, then go in the bushes," she continued. "I don't know what to tell you, but I'm not gonna put my child's life at risk because you want to change a law. So that you can be comfortable with your beliefs -- which means I have to change my beliefs and my rights? No."

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup. Find NJ.com Entertainment on Facebook.