Film star Tom Holland says getting sober is “the best thing I’ve ever done” - after admitting he felt “enslaved” to alcohol.
The British actor, best known for playing Spider-man, has opened up about his battles with sobriety, saying it began after a “very very boozy Christmas last year.”
He decided to take part in Dry January but then “all I could think about was having a drink … It really scared me”.
The 27-year-old added: “I just was like, ‘Wow, maybe I have a little bit of an alcohol thing.”
Speaking to the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast, the star said he then vowed to continue staying sober for longer but found it hard to resist England’s drinking culture.
“I felt like I couldn’t be social,” Holland said. “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.
“I just sort of said to myself, like, ‘Why? Why am I enslaved to this drink? Why am I so obsessed by the idea of having this drink?’”
He then set himself a target of going six months without drinking, and felt he had turned a corner when he celebrated his 27th birthday on 1 June.
By that time, he said, he was “the happiest I’ve ever been in my life”.
He found benefits included improved sleep and ability to handle everyday obstacles.
“Things that would go wrong on set, that would normally set me off, I could take in my stride. I had such better mental clarity. I felt healthier, I felt fitter.
“I’m happy to say it – I was definitely addicted to alcohol. I’m not shying away from that at all.”
Holland has said his journey inspired his mother to follow suit, with positive consequences.
“She’s loving it, and it’s been amazing,” he said. “I can’t believe the difference that I feel from not drinking. Yeah, I feel amazing.”
But he has distanced himself from the rugby community “because so much of it is about how much can you drink”.
Holland is currently nine months into a year-long break from acting, after a gruelling shoot for the Apple TV series The Crowded Room.
Speaking last month, the star said he had found it “tough” to play a character based on “the campus rapist” Billy Mulligan, a US man who claimed to have 24 alternate personalities.
Milligan was the first person to be found not guilty of his crimes by reason of insanity - on the basis of dissociative identity disorder - and instead of going to prison he spent a decade in psychiatric hospitals.
Although the past year has seen him confront difficult issues, the actor has been supported by his girlfriend and Spider-Man co-star Zendaya.
Speaking to the Smartless podcast last week, he said he was “lucky that I have someone like Zendaya in my life”.
“It’s interesting being in a romantic relationship with someone that is in the same boat as you,” he added.
“You can share your experiences and all that sort of stuff - and that’s worth its weight in gold.”
Holland’s career started to take off when he played Billy Elliot in the West End, before making his big-screen breakthrough with 2012’s tsunami drama The Impossible.
He made his debut as Spider-Man in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, and has since starred in three standalone Spider-Man movies. The most recent of these, No Way Home, was the highest-grossing film of 2021.
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