LOVE IT OR hate it, there’s no denying that giving up alcohol comes with some serious health perks. ‘Taking a break from drinking alcohol – even if it’s just for a couple of weeks – is a good idea, especially if you’re regularly consuming more than the recommended daily limit,’ says Dr Damon Raskin, a physician who is board certified in addiction medicine. Generally, that’s two drinks a day for men. Perhaps you have been reducing your alcohol intake and following suit of the many teetotal celebrities who have done the same, if so, your choice is backed by the latest science.
New evidence published in The Lancet indicates that while a reduction in alcohol consumption is always a good idea, there seems to be no threshold of alcohol consumption where there are no health risks. Meaning, complete abstinence is still preferential for the best illness prevention. Along with benefits such as improved sleep, energy levels and wellbeing, it’s no surprise that the likes of Brad Pitt and more recently Tom Holland have decided to swerve the sauce. Here are 23 celebrities that have chosen sobriety in order to ditch the negative effects.
Samuel L. Jackson
Jackson readily admits that sobriety helped him to become a better actor by getting into character in a deeper way. ‘I took it a step further, I drank and I used drugs,’ he told The Telegraph. ‘I liked the feeling of not being cognisant of what was going on around me.’
Tom Hardy
‘If I had four pints of lager and half a bottle of vodka I could turn this room into an absolute f*cking nightmare in about three minutes,’ Hardy told The Mirror about getting sober for life — from both drink and drugs. ‘I could destroy everything in my life I have worked so hard for.’
Bradley Cooper
‘If I continued it, I was really going to sabotage my whole life,’ Cooper told GQ in 2013. Cooper got sober at 29 years old and has now been a teetotal celebrity for 19 years.
Tom Holland
British actor Tom Holland, known for playing Spider-Man, opened up earlier in the year about his sobriety, and has recently launched a new zero-alcohol beer, Bero. On Jay Shetty’s podcast, On Purpose, he admitted that quitting alcohol was ‘the best thing I’ve ever done’ after realising the extent of his dependence.
Brad Pitt
‘I didn’t want to live that way any more,’ Pitt told GQ Style when asked about his struggles with alcohol addiction and going cold turkey. He reportedly hasn’t had a drink in 6 years.
Robert Downey Jr
The Avengers and Iron Man star has been sober for over 15 years. Downey Jr. made headlines in the early 2000s due to his battle with addiction, after which he turned his life around.
Zac Efron
The go-to man for all things fitness, nutrition and health, Efron has chosen a life without alcohol. ‘What I found is structure,’ Efron told Elle on the topic of his own sobriety back in 2016. ‘That led me to a balance of opposites: You get out of life what you put in.’
Ben Affleck
Affleck has been open about his struggle with alcohol for years, and completed his third stint in rehab in 2018. More recently Affleck told The Hollywood Reporter, ‘I became – out of no desire of my own – one of the poster boys for actor alcoholism and recovery and the whole thing. And the best part about that is that sometimes people call me up and they’re like, ‘Hey, can you help me out?”
Rob Lowe
Lowe credits his sobriety to his wife, Sheryl Berkoff. ‘She inspired me to get sober. She’s put up with my defects of character as they call it,’ he said. ‘In sobriety the lessons keep coming if you’re lucky enough to be along as long as I have.’
Gerard Butler
‘Maybe a stronger person wouldn’t have needed to go,’ he said about going to rehab. ‘When you hear the word rehab, you think, ‘He’s a mess, he’s f*cked up.’ But I’m glad I did it. I’ve made a sh*tload of wrong decisions in my life. But I know I’ve made some right ones as well.’
Calvin Harris
‘I stopped drinking because it actually was making me ill,’ the DJ told the BBC. ‘It was affecting my brain in the worst way.’
Colin Farrell
Farrell recently opened up about spending more than a decade sober and admits that he now does ‘a bit of yoga, I like a nice hike and I drink dragon nasal juice.’
Kit Harrington
Harrington shared his struggles with alcohol and addiction in an interview with The Sunday Times saying ‘I went through some pretty horrible stuff,’. He has now been alcohol free for 3 years.
Andy Murray
‘I always wanted to see how far I could go in the sport,’ Murray said about giving up booze. ‘I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardise that.’
Pharrell Williams
‘Everybody else can do what they want, but that stuff isn’t for me. I’ve been drunk nine times in my life, and I ate some weed brownies once.’ Williams told PAPER magazine.
Daniel Radcliffe
‘It’s lovely. I barely think about it [alcohol]’ he explained to The Telegraph, after a long route to getting sober after filming the Harry Potter franchise.
Joe Manganiello
‘I was homeless, careless and broke with no career,’ he said in an interview with the Huffington Post. ‘So yes, it was worth it [to get sober].’
Tyler, the Creator
The rapper shared in an interview with Fantastic Man magazine why he doesn’t drink alcohol, ‘I just don’t want to drink. I know that I don’t want to be that drunk guy. But I do know I want to hit a jump on a dirt-bike. I can look at that and say: ‘I want to do that.’ I’ve never seen anyone drunk, like, ‘Damn, I want to be that”
Chris Martin
Martin shared on Pete Holmes’ podcast, You Made it Weird, ‘I don’t do so well on drugs and alcohol. It messes with the music. Some people, it enhances it. For me, it doesn’t.’
Eminem
Recently celebrating 16 years of sobriety, Mathers shared that he had previously been addicted to drugs and alcohol. ‘My addiction didn’t start in my early days when I was coming up. My drug usage started at the beginning of that first album,’ he shared in a personal essay for XXL. Mathers took to Instagram recently to share his black and gold recovery chip to signify 16 years sober.
Lewis Hamilton
The Formula One driver considers himself sober curious, and has adopted the lifestyle change in order to avoid terrible hangovers, ‘I’ll suffer for several days — sometimes it’ll be like three or four days. You have that one shot and are like, ‘Damn, why did I do that?’ when you get home.’
‘I don’t know if I’m going to drink again,’ Hamilton told Vogue, ‘Since I stopped drinking, I feel so much better, so much clearer. I sleep better, I wake up and I can still get up at 5am.’
Kendrick Lamar
Rapper Kendrick Lamar has been candid about his largely clean-cut lifestyle. In a 2013 interview on The Arsenio Hall Show, he explained, ‘I think that come from just being around it so much as a kid. I had my share of experiences just watching and being in the midst of the party, y’know.’
‘This is who I am, you know and I’m not afraid to put it out there, not afraid to look in the mirror and I’m not following any trends, this is who I am,’ he said.
Josh Widdicombe
Comedian Josh Widdicombe has been sober for two years. ‘I didn’t drink all the time, but when I did, I couldn’t stop,’ shares Widdicombe in an interview with Men’s Health. ‘I’m definitely not down on booze – I had some of the best times of my life when I was drinking and university was brilliant because of alcohol. I just relate to it all wrong. I’m a bit of an obsessive, excessive character, whether that’s work or buying books.’
This article originally appeared on Men’s Health UK.
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