Brad Pitt austerity journey: his most candid quotes and stories

Brad Pitt Has a journey with soberness over the years.

In 2016, PITT went to Alcoholics Anonymous after an incident on a private jet with his family that led to an investigation into child abuse. A week after the news was broken, Angelina JolieWith whom Pitt married in 2014, a divorce submitted. (The separation of Jolie and Pitt took place in court until it was completed in December 2024.)

Later that year the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services Pitt knew. In 2017, Pitt opened about stopping drinking and how his life had improved.

“Personally, I can’t remember a day that I came from the university when I didn’t see or had a spliff or something. Something. And you realize that much of it is, uh cigarettes, you know, pacifier. And I run with feelings,” he said Gq At that time. “I am really very, very happy to do all that with all of that. I mean, I stopped anything but on a boozing when I started my family. But even this year, you know – things I had not to do with. I had just been too much. It has just become a problem. And I am really happy that it has been half a year now, but I have my feelings again.”

Keep scrolling to see Pitt’s best quotes about getting sober:

Being near alcohol

At the start of Pitt’s struggles, he opened himself about how he abstained alcohol, especially while owning his winery, Miraval.

“I enjoy very, very much of wine, but I just drove it to the ground,” he thought about it Gq In 2017. “I had to step away. And to be honest, I was able to drink a Russian under the table with his own vodka. I was a professional. I was good. I don’t want to live like that anymore.”

Know when to stop

Pitt previously told the New York Times In September 2019 that he “had taken things so far,” he could, so he “removed” his “drinking privileges.” When the actor recovered, he was surrounded by men who experienced similar struggles.

“You had all these men who were open and honest in a way I have never heard,” he remembered. “It was this safe space where there was little judgment, and therefore little judgment about yourself … It was really free to expose only the ugly sides of yourself. There is great value in that.”

Unhealthy coping -mechanism

During a sitting with Interview magazine In December 2019, Pitt referred to his drinking habit as a “escape” and “bad service” for himself.

“I think we live in a time when we are extremely judgmental and quickly treat people as disposable. We always have a lot of importance to the error. But the next step, what you do after the mistake is what a person really defines,” he thought. “We are all going to make mistakes. But what is that next step? As a culture, we don’t seem to be stuck to see what the next step is of that person. And that is the part that I find so much more invigorating and interesting.”

Support system

Pitt credited friend Bradley Cooper As one of his influences to refrain from drinking.

“I became sober because of this man,” Pitt said after Cooper had awarded him the prize for the best supporting actor for his role in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood During the 2020 National Board of Review Annual Awards Gala. “And since then every day has been happier.”

Making connections in AA

In AA, Pitt formed a friendship with Dax Shepard.

“You go around in a circle, it’s a kind of spiral because it’s a really busy room. Dax was usually at the end because he has been there for a while. He is a bit like an older statesman. And I really respected it,” he said during a appearance of June 2025 on the Podcast of Shepard’s “Armchair Expert”. “It was really open, honest, was a way to take the theme that seemed to go in the evening and then put it in the funniest package. And it meant a lot to me, it really did.”

Pitt added that when he was in Aa where he was at a low point.

“I tried everything and everyone, everything that someone threw at me. It was a difficult time. I had to restart,” he continued. “I had to wake up the F *** in some areas.”