‘Why am I enslaved to this drink?’: Tom Holland opens up about battle with alcohol
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Holland said that he realised he might have an alcohol problem after having “a very, very boozy December” in 2021.
PHOTO: AFP
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Popular British actor Tom Holland has not had an alcoholic drink in 18 months.
“It is the best thing I’ve ever done”, said Holland, 27, during an appearance on Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast.
Since it was posted on YouTube on Monday, the podcast has garnered close to one million views.
Holland, who is best known for playing Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, said he realised that he had been “enslaved” to alcohol after “a very, very boozy December”.
“I didn’t one day wake up and say, ‘I’m giving up drinking’,” said the actor, who shared that he decided to first give up drinking for a month in January 2022.
“I just wanted to do a Dry January,” he said, referring to the practice of avoiding any alcohol in that month.
But all he could think about was having a drink, Holland added.
“I was waking up thinking about it. I was checking the clock (to see) when’s 12, and it just really scared me.
“I just thought, ‘Wow, maybe, maybe I’ve got a little bit of an alcohol thing’”.
He then decided to “punish” himself and stay dry in February as well to “prove” to himself he was not addicted to alcohol.
“Two months go by, and I was still really struggling,” said Holland.
“I felt like I couldn’t be social. I felt like I couldn’t go to the pub and have a lime soda. I couldn’t go out for dinner. I was really, really struggling, and I started to worry that maybe I had an alcohol problem.”
Holland then decided to not have a drink, until his birthday in June 2022.
And it paid off, he said.
“I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life. I could sleep better. I could handle problems better”.
Holland, who said he felt healthier and fitter, added: “I just sort of said to myself, ‘Why? Why am I enslaved to this drink? Why am I so obsessed by the idea of having this drink?’”
The actor said the decision to quit drinking was the “best thing I’ve ever done”.
“A year and a half into it now, it doesn’t even cross my mind,” said Holland, adding that his friends have also been “super supportive” of his sobriety journey.
He is currently on a breaking from acting, after a gruelling shoot for the Apple TV+ psychological thriller series The Crowded Room.
In the series, Holland plays an American criminal with dissociative identity disorder.
