Brad Pitt reveals he’s no longer sober after seven years
Brad Pitt revealed he broke his sobriety after seven years.
“I was sober for seven years. And then I got back off the wagon,” he confessed with a laugh in an Esquire interview published on Monday.
“In a more restrained manner. I got overconfident a couple times, went, Yep, nope, not good for me,” he explained. “Not in big quantities.”
Pitt’s sobriety came up after he offered the interviewer some wine during their sit-down at the actor’s $12 million Los Angeles home.
After revealing he’s no longer sober, Pitt explained he “can have a few” glasses of wine, but he “can’t have a lot.”
“I have to be professional about it,” he told the reporter.
Elsewhere in the interview, Pitt — who split from ex-wife Angelina Jolie in 2016 — revealed he felt “suicidal” while navigating “one little period” of “family stuff.”
“The pain was so oppressive that — I wasn’t going to act on this, but I could feel — I could feel the cold steel of the bullet in my head, and it felt like relief,” the “Fight Club” actor said.
Pitt quit drinking after an alleged 2016 drunken plane incident which is said to have contributed to the downfall of his and Jolie’s marriage.
Jolie, 51, claimed in court documents that her then-husband physically harmed her and one of their six kids — Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 20, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 18.
The “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” co-stars were declared legally single in 2019 and settled their divorce last year.
Pitt — who is estranged from his eldest children — first revealed he was sober and joined a 12-step program in a 2019 New York Times interview.
“I had taken things as far as I could take it, so I removed my drinking privilege,” he said at the time.
Last year, Pitt detailed his “amazing” first AA meeting on Dax Shephard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, recalling being “pretty much on [his] knees” and needing “to wake the f–k up in some areas.”
He explained, “I was trying anything and everything, anything anyone threw at me. … It was a difficult time. I needed rebooting.”
The “F1” star also admitted that while it felt daunting as his turn was “coming around” the circle, he felt inspired after watching “everyone [being] so open.”
He remembered, “It gives you permission to go, ‘OK, I’m gonna step out on this edge and see what happens.’ And then I really grew to love it.”
If you or someone you care about is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
