Tom Holland is getting candid about his hard-won sobriety.
The Spider-Man: Far From Home star, 27, spoke about his decision to give up drinking on Monday’s episode of the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast, calling it “the best thing I’ve ever done.”
He shared that his sober journey began with a bit too much indulging during the holiday season last year. “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. [It was] Christmas time, I was on vacation, I was drinking a lot, and I’ve always been able to drink a lot,” he recalled.
“I think I get my genes from my mom’s side in that thing — I can drink,” he said. “And I decided to just give [it] up for January.”
But dry January proved to be a challenge for the actor. “All I could think about was having a drink. That’s all I could think about,” he admitted. “I was waking up thinking about it. I was checking the clock, when’s it 12 p.m.?”
His intense cravings started to concern him. “It just really scared me. I just was like, ‘Wow, maybe. Maybe I have a little bit of an alcohol thing.’ So I sort of decided to punish myself and say, ‘I’ll do February as well. I’ll do two months off. If I can do two months off, then I can prove to myself that I don’t have a problem.’ ”
As he pressed on with his alcohol pause, however, he increasingly felt the pressure of England’s drinking-focused culture. “Two months go by and I was still really struggling. I felt like I couldn’t be social,” Holland continued. “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 maybe I had an alcohol problem.”
He said he finally turned a corner as he neared his birthday last month. “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.’ And by the time I got to June 1, I was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life,” The Crowded Room star explained, listing some of the benefits that abstaining from alcohol brought him.
“I could sleep better. I could handle problems better,” he remembered. “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.”
He wondered why he didn’t ditch the drinking sooner. “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 noted.
His sobriety did force the avid sports fan to give up a beloved pastime: watching rugby. “I just felt so much pressure, and this is one of the [reasons] why I’ve sort of distanced myself from the rugby community ’cause so much of it is about how much can you drink. Let’s get you as drunk as possible,” he explained, before quickly adding that he has no regrets. “It’s honestly been the best thing I’ve ever done.”
His decision to quit drinking also had another positive ripple effect; inspiring his mom to go sober herself after watching her son thrive without alcohol.
“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.”
Through it all, Holland has had his girlfriend, actress Zendaya, by his side. On the July 3 episode of the Wondery podcast Smartless, hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett, Holland said he’s “lucky I have someone like Zendaya in my life.”
He added, “It’s interesting being in a romantic relationship with someone that is in the same boat as you. You can share your experiences and all that sort of stuff — and that’s worth its weight in gold.”
In a BuzzFeed interview last month, Holland joked about not having “rizz” — or charisma — and having no use for it now that he’s happy in his relationship with the Euphoria star, 26.
“I’m happy and in love, so I’ve got no need for rizz,” he said.
The Crowded Room actor added, “I have no rizz whatsoever; I have limited rizz.” Addressing the “secret” to his supposed rizz, he said, “I need you to fall in love with me, really, for it to work.”
“So, long game,” he joked. “Probably making a movie with each other — it definitely helps when the characters are falling in love with one another; you can sort of blur the lines a little bit.”
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