Dune actor Josh Brolin has dealt with drug and alcohol issues since he was a child. Those experiences might be in the rearview mirror, but Brolin is now looking back on a lifetime of struggles and reflecting on his journey to sobriety in his new memoir, From Under the Trunk.
"I was born to drink. I was birthed to drink," he writes in the book, per The Sunday Times. "My mother drank exactly like I did, and I was raised to be a man and drink like the male equivalent of my mother."
Brolin opened up about his multiple bouts of sobriety—and subsequent relapses—in a new interview with The Sunday Times. He was just nine years old when he first tried marijuana and 13 when he took LSD; as he grew older, he often swung between alcoholism and sobriety. In total, he's been to jail nine times.
The True Grit star had a hard time trying to stay sober throughout his life. He admitted he'd tried to keep his drinking hidden from his two eldest children, who are now 36 and 29, to varied success. At one point, after divorcing his first wife Alice Adair and sharing joint custody of the kids, he "crossed a line" that woke him up.
"It was about taking care of animals and not being there to take care of an animal for a moment," he told The Sunday Times of the familial confrontation. His inaction nearly caused one of his children's pets to die. "I was like, 'That’s because of me.'"
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Brolin reached a breaking point in 2013 when he woke up hungover outside his house with nothing more than a memory of getting in a fight at a fast food drive-thru the night before. He then dragged himself to see his 99-year-old grandmother on her deathbed, and it was at that moment he realized he was at the halfway point of her life and that something had to change.
"I knew that was going to be the last time I drank," he said of the life-changing thought. He took care of himself by going to rehab and joining Alcoholics Anonymous.
Now, the 56-year-old is celebrating a decade of a happy sober life. "I like getting older. It’s like a great excuse to finally go, 'OK, just mellow out, you don’t need to constantly spin,'" he said. Needless to say he doesn't miss drinking one bit.
"I love being sober. I have more fun," he said. “There’s nothing that I go through that I am absolutely certain wouldn’t be worse if I was drinking.”
Brolin's latest movie Brothers is streaming now on Prime Video and The Roku Channel.