Brad Pitt has always spoken openly and honestly about his vices and about the negative effects they have had on his loved ones. The 61-year-old admits that he shows all the signs of someone with an addictive personality, who has used both alcohol and tobacco as a means to relax and unwind throughout his career.
A lifelong smoker, he recently confessed that he finds it hard to give up the evil weed and for years was able to puff through one or two packs of cigarettes a day. “I don’t have that ability to do just one or two a day,” he told GQ in 2022. “It’s not in my makeup. I’m all in. And I’m going to drive into the ground. I’ve lost my privileges.”
Brad Pitt sobers up with a little help from his friends
Brad has been equally as candid about his struggles with alcohol – a battle he managed to win after seeking professional advice. In 2019, he told the New York Times that he joined Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) after his marriage to Angelina Jolie broke down, eventually ending with the actress filing for divorce in 2016.
With the AA meetings, and encouragement from his great friend Bradley Cooper, who had been through the same addiction problems, Pitt was able to overcome hos reliance on booze. “It was actually really freeing just to expose the ugly sides of yourself,” he said at the time.
And last week, he chatted about his time in AA with someone he met during those meetings, Dax Shepard.
“I was pretty much on my back, on my knees. I was really open. I was trying anything and anyone – anything anyone threw at me,” the actor confessed in Shepard’s podcast. “It was a particular, difficult time. I needed rebooting. I needed to wake the f**k up in some areas and it just meant a lot to me.
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Talking about your drink problem and defects in front of others
The meetings involved around 30 men – all of whom Brad got to know. The most daunting aspect was opening up for the first time in front of people. “The first is, Oh my God it’s coming around, it’s getting closer, it’s going to be yours [turn] – but everyone was so open, it gives you permission in a way to go, ‘Okay, I’m gonna step out on this edge and see what happens. I just really grew to love it.
“It was also… anything could go. Cause some guys would be like, ‘You know what? I didn’t have such a bad week’. They’d talk about their wins, little failures and little successes and you know what? I woke up and I’m gonna do it again tomorrow. It was really moving. Some of these men were really moving,“ the Hollywood star concluded.
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