Tom Holland has been sober for a year and a half, happiest Ive ever been
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We know that Tom Holland is taking a year off of acting after his grueling experience making The Crowded Room TV show for Apple TV+. He said the experience broke him and he needs some time to recover. But acting isn’t the only thing he’s taking a break from. Tom recently shared on a podcast that he’s been abstaining from alcohol for a year and a half after realizing he had an addiction to it. I feel like his story is super relatable even though he is this very famous person. He says he wasn’t able to give it up successfully until he became more aware of his reasons for relying on alcohol in the first place, which included social anxiety. He started with dry January and then just challenged himself to keep going, and now he’s been sober since January 2022.
Tom knew he had a problem: “I was definitely addicted to alcohol, not shying away from that at all,” the actor, 27, revealed on the July 10 episode of “On Purpose with Jay Shetty.” “The Crowded Room“ star challenged himself to “dry January” in 2022, giving up alcohol after a boozy holiday season. During that month, Holland said, “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 p.m.? It just really scared me,” he admitted.
He pushed through until his birthday: Holland proceeded to “punish” himself with another month sober and ultimately challenged himself to quit drinking until his birthday on June 1, 2022. “By the time I got to June 1, I was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life,” he recalled. “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 so much better mental clarity. I felt healthier, I felt fitter.” After that realization, Holland began to question, “Why am I so enslaved by this drink? Why am I so obsessed by the idea of having this drink?”
Why he was so drawn to alcohol: The “Spider-Man” star concluded that a lot of his draw to alcohol was to “feel more comfortable in a social environment.” “I would look back and recognize that I would go to events for work, and I can’t enjoy myself until I’ve had a few beers, and I just felt so much pressure,” he said. Similarly, he felt like he couldn’t’ refrain from having a drink while out with friends or watching rugby games in public settings. Holland shared that he had made previous attempts at quitting alcohol, but this time was different because he started addressing the reasons he felt like he needed a drink.
I know how Tom feels when it comes to social anxiety. There are certain situations like parties or concerts that I find very challenging to enjoy without a drink to take off the edge. I think my senses and nervous system get overstimulated easily in crowded places. But I am so proud of Tom for being honest with himself that alcohol had gone beyond an occasional crutch to something he was craving by early afternoon. It’s very difficult to acknowledge that you have a problem but nothing will improve without first facing the truth. This story also puts his comments about filming The Crowded Room into perspective. That show started filming in March 2022, so that would have been about two months after Tom stopped drinking. I could imagine that in the beginning of filming, he might still have been struggling with sobriety and going through a hard time. In the podcast episode, he mentions that he avoided social situations during the early days of quitting drinking because he didn’t want to be tempted at restaurants or events. He describes really feeling the benefits of sobriety by June of that year. But pursuing a huge lifestyle change like that, and working on a demanding TV show? That would be a lot for anyone, and I’m really impressed he’s done it all. It feels like a lot of people in my generation and younger (I’m a young-ish millennial) are questioning alcohol and the outsized place it has in our culture. I’m someone who loves a craft cocktail on a Friday night, but I’m happy to see sobriety being normalized.
Photos credit: Getty, Avalon.red, Cover Images and Apple Press
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