Sober Celebs

JAMIE LEE CURTIS

“Getting sober just exploded my life. Now I have a much clearer sense of myself and what I can and can’t do. I am more successful than I have ever been. I feel very positive where I never did before, and I think that’s all a direct result of getting sober.”

EVAN DANDO, of The Lemonheads

“I decided if I gave up the thing that was holding me back, which was alcohol, I might be able start writing songs again. It worked too. I actually lost my taste for booze, which was weird.”

JEMIMA FRENCH

“I don’t drink anymore. I don’t want to get old, and drinking really makes you old. I just got fed up of feeling slightly groggy in the morning when I went out and had too many drinks. Now, I can go out until two or three in the morning and leap out of bed the next day and feel great.”

GRAHAM COXON, Blur

“You just don’t do it. Drink. Plus, don’t be scared of being bored. And if you do get sad, don’t think, ‘Fuck, I wanna have a drink,’ just think, ‘I’m sad, it’ll pass.’ And that’s pretty much it.”

FATBOY SLIM

“I bought myself an extra ten years as a DJ by quitting drinking. I would have been either burnt-out or dead by now.”

KRISTEN JOHNSTON

“It’s time for addiction to stand up and demand some respect. Because every time someone is ostracized for being an addict, every time there’s a breathless, trumped-up, sensational headline, every time we giggle at a wasted celebrity, and every time addiction is televised as salacious entertainment, yet another addict is shamed into silence.”

SAMUEL L. JACKSON

“I ain’t the kind of guy who can have one drink. I never could. That’s what I have to remember. I never had one drink in my whole life. When I bought a six-pack, I didn’t drink a couple of beers and put the rest in the fridge for later in the week. I drank the lot, then went out and bought another one. I was compulsive.”

EDIE FALCO

“[Getting sober] is like learning to ride a bike, you know? You have to get your bearings and you have to stay stable. And balanced.”

RINGO STARR

“I had a serious drinking problem… the blackouts got worse, and I didn’t know where I’d been, what I’d done. I knew I had the problem for years. But it plays tricks with your head. Very cunning and baffling, is alcohol….If any of my friends can’t deal with me being sober, then I just don’t bother with them. Because for me to live is more important than a friend getting uptight because I won’t have a drink. If we go to a party now, Barbara and I usually leave around about 11:30, when everyone else starts getting rocky… It makes my heart glad. I lived that ridiculous myth: To be creative you have to have your brain twisted in some way. Since we’ve stopped, it’s fabulous.”

ANTHONY HOPKINS

“I would show up on movie sets after drinking and not sleeping. What made me stop drinking was not remembering where I’d been the night before. One day I just thought, ‘I’ve had enough of this.’ It was simple. I didn’t want to go on feeling bad. I don’t miss drinking, not at all. I don’t want to ever go back there. Now I just love English tea and digestive biscuits or Hobnobs. I just thought, well I have a choice here. Change or die. Grow or go.”

AMBER VALETTA

On what she would say to her twentysomething self. “Just say no. Drugs and alcohol will rob you of your present, keep you a prisoner of your past and hold you hostage, blocking any real future. Addiction will be your darkest demon, but it will ultimately save your life. Your sobriety at age 25 will become the cornerstone of building your self-esteem and discovering who you truly are and want to be.”

JIM CARREY

“I’m very serious about no alcohol, no drugs. Life is too beautiful.”

KRISTIN DAVIS, Charlotte from Sex and the City

Became teetotal aged 22. “I really didn’t think I would pass 30. I don’t know why or whatever, I just didn’t. That’s a very weird thing to say, I’m sorry. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I was drinking so much as a youth. I drank a lot when I was a teenager and I don’t drink any more, because that’s when I thought, you know, I’m gonna end up a car wreck. I just had a fatalistic view of the whole situation at that point. I just realized that drinking was counterproductive to what I was trying to do.”

EWAN MCGREGOR

“It just wasn’t so much fun any more. So I decided to stop. It wasn’t that big a deal. I mean, it’s not an easy thing to do, especially here – the culture is so wrapped up in alcohol and drinking – but it was just one too many things in my life. I was a husband, a father, and I was a drinker. And the one I was willing to let go was the drinking. So I just did that and it made everything else much easier. My life is much better for it. I don’t miss it.’

LANA DEL REY

“I would drink every day. I would drink alone….Until it wasn’t working for me anymore. Thinking about not drinking forever was very scary, but once I did it wasn’t hard anymore because I had all of these miracles happen that let me know I was on exactly the right path.”