Tom Holland has opened up about realizing that he had become “worried” about his relationship with alcohol and his journey to becoming sober in a new interview on the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast.
Like many, the Spider-Man actor explained that he had been drinking heavily over the Christmas period and decided to try Dry January last year but found it to be really difficult.
“I was drinking a lot and I’ve always been able to drink a lot. All I could think about was having a drink. That’s all I could think about. I was waking up thinking about it. I was checking the clock, ‘When’s it 12pm?’ Holland said. “It just really scared me. I just was like, ‘Wow, maybe. 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. If I can do two months off, then I can prove to myself that I don’t have a problem’.”
The 27-year-old said that his decision led him to struggle mentally as he felt that he couldn’t go out and socialize or go to the pub, which isn’t surprising considering a lot of Brits drink when socializing and there’s an extremely unfortunate stigma around not doing.
“I was really, really struggling and I started to really worry that maybe I had an alcohol problem,” he said.
Holland says he gave himself time off from drinking until his next birthday and by that time he says he was “the happiest I’ve 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. I had such better mental clarity. I felt healthier, I felt fitter.”
“I just sort of said to myself, like, ‘Why? Why am I enslaved to this drink? Why am I so obsessed by the idea of having this drink?’”
He said that the pressure to drink caused him to distance himself from one of his favorite hobbies, rugby and that he felt “so much pressure.”
“I just felt so much pressure, and this is one of the [reasons] why I’ve sort of distanced myself from the rugby community because so much of it is about how much can you drink. Let’s get you as drunk as possible…”
He continued, “It’s honestly been the best thing I’ve ever done. I can’t believe the difference that I feel from not drinking. Yeah, I feel amazing.”
(via The Independent, featured image: Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
