Now sober Tom Holland said his drinking “really scared” him

SHARE NOW

After a year and a half without a drink, Tom Holland calls sobriety “the best thing I’ve ever done.”

The 27-year-old Spider-Man: No Way Home star appeared on the On Purpose With Jay Shetty podcast, where he admitted his sobriety “journey” started after a particularly “boozy” holiday. “All I could think about was having a drink,” Tom expressed.

“I’ve always been able to drink a lot,” Tom admitted. However, he decided to give a dry January a go — and found it difficult.

“I was waking up thinking about it. I was checking the clock, ‘When’s it 12?’ And it just really scared me. ‘Wow, maybe I have a little bit of an alcohol thing,"” Holland expressed. He then decided to extend his dry spell.

Tom explained, “Two months go by and I was still really struggling…I felt I couldn’t go to the pub and have a lime soda. I couldn’t go out to dinner. I was really, really struggling. And I started to really worry that maybe I had an alcohol problem.”

The Crowded Room star then challenged himself to last until his birthday: “If I could go six months without alcohol, then I could prove to myself that I don’t have a problem,” he recalled thinking.

“By the time I had got to June first, I was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life,” Holland said.

“I could sleep better. I could handle problems better. Things that would go wrong on set that would set me off, I could take in my stride,” Holland recalled. “I had such better mental clarity. I felt better. I felt fitter. And I just said to myself…’Why am I so obsessed with having this drink?"”

Holland said if his “own little journey” encourages someone “to drink less, then that’s great,” but he’s not going to preach.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.