For the first time, actor Tom Holland has opened up regarding his addiction to alcohol. During a recent episode of On Purpose with Jay Shetty, the Marvel star explained that his battle with the substance began more than a year ago shortly after the winter holiday season concluded.
“I didn’t one day wake up and say, ‘I’m giving up drinking,'” he told Jay Shetty.
“I just, like many Brits, had had a very, very boozy December — Christmas time, I was on vacation. I was drinking a lot. And I’ve always been able to drink a lot. I think I get my genes from my mom’s side in that I can drink. And I decided to just give up for January.”
Holland set a goal to remain sober throughout the month of January, but it proved to be much tougher than he had originally imagined. As he puts it, he woke up thinking about alcohol and began to realize how dependent he had become on the substance.
“All I could think about was having a drink,” he explained.
“I was waking up thinking about it. I was checking the clock, ‘When’s it 12?’ And it just really scared me. I just thought, well, maybe I have a little bit of an alcohol thing.”
After identifying his problematic relationship with alcohol, he made a commitment to give up the substance from February until his birthday in June. In doing so, Holland found joy in his distance from alcohol.
“I said to myself, if I can do six months without alcohol, then I can prove to myself that I don’t have a problem,” he said.
“And by the time I had got to June 1, I was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”
More than a year sober, the actor says he’s the happiest he’s ever been.
“I could sleep better, I could handle problems better. Things that would go wrong on set that would normally set me off, I could take in my stride,” he told Jay Shetty.
“I had so much such better mental clarity. I felt healthier, I felt fitter.”
