Brad Pitt: Sober for Seven Years, Then Drinking Again
The actor told Esquire he is drinking again after seven years of sobriety, though he now keeps to a few glasses of wine and watches the amount closely.
Brad Pitt told Esquire magazine that he is drinking again after seven years of sobriety, and TMZ reported his comments on August 10. Serbian outlets picked up the story a day later.
The subject wasn’t raised by a question from the interviewer but by a gesture from the actor himself. During the conversation, Pitt poured him a glass of wine, which led to the question of whether he keeps wine only for guests. His answer: no.
I was sober for seven years. And then I started again, in a more restrained way. A few times I got overconfident, and I said to myself, no, this isn’t good for me. Not in large amounts.
According to the transcript of the conversation, he said this while laughing. He immediately added the limit he now sets for himself.
How Much Does He Drink Now?
A few glasses of wine, and that’s where he stops. He explained that he watches the amount because, in his words, “I have to be professional about it.” He says he has overestimated his own control a few times, and concluded afterward that larger quantities aren’t good for him.
That marks a shift from everything he has said about alcohol in recent years. Until now, he had publicly stood behind complete abstinence, and that stance was part of his public image.
What Had He Said About His Addiction Before?
He first spoke publicly about it in 2017, when he said he couldn’t remember a single day after college when he hadn’t used alcohol or marijuana.
Two years later, in 2019, he said he had spent a year and a half attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He later credited actor Bradley Cooper with helping him quit drinking.
His sobriety began after his split from Angelina Jolie, with whom he has six children. He places the start of the meetings, and the help he got from Cooper, in that same period. That stretch of his life has become the turning point in everything he has said about himself over the past nine years.
That is why the Esquire statement isn’t just one line from a long conversation. It changes a fact that had been attached to his name since 2017, which is why both TMZ and The Hollywood Reporter carried it on August 10.
The Part of the Interview Getting the Most Attention
In the same Esquire conversation, Pitt also spoke about a period he described only as family matters, without going into detail. He said suicide isn’t something in his nature, but that the pain at one point was so heavy he understood how someone could see relief in death.
He stressed that he never intended to act on that feeling and that, in his words, his survival instincts kicked in right away. When the interviewer asked whether that period involved his children, he declined to go into detail.
Family stuff. We can leave it at that.
He said nothing more about his relationship with Angelina Jolie or about the children. He summed up that whole part of the interview in a single line, saying that even for him, despite everything, it hasn’t been easy, adding that he still feels he won life’s jackpot.
The 62 year old actor has spent decades in the public eye, as much for his films as for his private life. This time there is no unnamed source and no outside interpretation. He announced the end of his seven years of sobriety himself, in an interview he gave, and set the limits of what he shared himself.
