Tom Holland has discussed his decision to go sober after deciding that drinking was impacting his life too much.
The Spider-Man actor, 27, spoke candidly about his relationship with alcohol in the latest episode of Jay Shetty’s podcast which dropped on Monday.
His moment of clarity came while taking part in Dry January.
The Kingston Upon Thames-born star explained: “I didn’t one day wake up and say ‘I’m giving up drinking,’ I just, like many Brits, had had a very, very boozy December, Christmas time, I was on vacation, I was drinking a lot.”
He then went on to say that he has “always been able to drink a lot,” adding he thinks he gets that from his mother’s side of the family.
“I decided to just give up for January, I wanted to do just Dry January, and all I think about was taking a drink,” he confessed.
“It was all I could think about. I was waking up thinking about it, I was checking the clock, ‘When’s it 12?’ And it just really scared me.
“I was like, ‘Wow, maybe I have a little bit of an alcohol thing,’ so I sort of decided to just punish myself and say I’ll do February as well, I’ll do two months off,” he continued.
In his mind, he decided that if he could “do two months off then I could prove to myself that I don’t have a problem.”
However, after the two months had passed, he found that he was “still really struggling, 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 really worry that I had an alcohol problem.”
So he then decided to extend his challenge by a further three months until his birthday on June 1.
“I said to myself, if I can do six months without alcohol, then I can prove to myself that I don’t have a problem,’ Holland admitted, adding, “by the time I had got to June 1, I was the happiest I had ever been in my life.”
Noting other benefits of going alcohol free, he said that he was sleeping better, solving problems better, “things that would go wrong on set that would normally set me off, I could take in my stride.”
He also believed that due to his new lifestyle choice he had “such better mental clarity, I felt healthier, I felt fitter and I just sort of said to myself, why am I enslaved to this drink? Why am I so obsessed by the idea of having this drink?”
Holland – who is happily dating Euphoria actress Zendaya – has also actively “distanced” himself from negative influences, which in his case, was the rugby community.
“So much of it is, ‘How much can you drink? Let’s get you as drunk as possible.’ It’s honestly been the best thing I’ve ever done,” he declared.
He is now one year and a half into being sober and having a drink “hasn’t even crossed my mind”.
Instead, he has discovered other “fantastic and really healthy alternatives,” such as “one beer” which is “full of electrolytes.”
While he isn’t trying to preach that others should follow by his example, he’s just saying that this is what he did and it works for him.
“If I could encourage someone to drink less, that would be great. But I don’t want to start getting into the world of, ‘You need to stop drinking,’ because it’s not for me to say,” he concluded.
