Tom Holland Describes How ‘Obsessed’ He Was With Drinking Before He Got Sober

July 11, 2023
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Tom Holland has revealed he was once “addicted to alcohol.”

But now, the actor is celebrating over a year of sobriety ― and opening up about how he got there.

“I didn’t one day wake up and say, ‘I’m giving up drinking,’” the “Spider-Man: No Way Home” star said during an appearance on Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast Monday. “I just wanted to do Dry January, and all I could think about was having a drink.”

“I was waking up thinking about it. I was checking the clock ― ‘When’s it 12?’ And it just really scared me,” Holland explained. “I just was like, ‘Wow, maybe I have a little bit of an alcohol thing.’ So I sort of decided to punish myself and say, ‘I’ll do February as well ― I’ll do two months off.’”

At the two-month mark, the actor said, he was “still really struggling” and felt like he “couldn’t be social.”

Holland attends the "Uncharted" premiere on Feb. 8, 2022, in Madrid.
Holland attends the “Uncharted” premiere on Feb. 8, 2022, in Madrid.

Pablo Cuadra via Getty Images

“I started to really worry that maybe I had an alcohol problem. So I decided that I would wait until my birthday, which is June 1st,” he said. “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.’ And by the time I had got to June 1st, I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life.”

“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,” Holland said, adding that he was healthier and fitter, and had more “mental clarity” than before.

It led him to ask himself: “Why am I enslaved to this drink? Why am I so obsessed by the idea of having this drink?”

“I was definitely addicted to alcohol, I’m not shying away from that at all,” he added. But, he said, he’s not on a quest to make everyone who drinks get sober.

“If I could encourage someone to drink less, then that’s great,” Holland said. “But I don’t want to start getting into the world of ‘You need to stop drinking,’ because it’s just not for me to say.”

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOqEl4ADyVk?rel=0&start=1847&enablejsapi=1]

Holland spoke about his sobriety in May while doing press for his Apple TV+ miniseries, “The Crowded Room.”

The BAFTA winner said the role pushed him to a dark place, and made him recognize his own “triggers” and “things that stress me out.”

“I’m no stranger to the physical aspects of the job, doing the whole action-movie thing,” Holland told Entertainment Weekly at the time. “But the mental aspect, it really beat me up, and it took a long time for me to recover afterward, to sort of get back to reality.”

Need help with substance use disorder or mental health issues? In the U.S., call 800-662-HELP (4357) for the SAMHSA National Helpline.

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