Tom Is How Tom Holland Ditched Booze for Good
He’s best known for playing Peter Parker in the latest instalments of the Spider-Man franchise, but 28-year-old Tom Holland has a new superpower: sobriety.
The British actor decided to take part in Dry January in 2022, and he says the experience left him unsettled by how much he craved alcohol at social events.
In his March issue cover interview with Men’s Health, he recalls a time when he’d offered to be the designated driver at a poker night with his brother. Midway through the night, Holland asked his brother if he could drive them home instead; he felt he couldn’t enjoy himself without alcohol.
‘Every Friday after work was a write-off: let’s get drunk and have a good time,’ he recalls. ‘I didn’t have bad experiences, but I would drink enough that I would ruin my next day.’
Rather than commit to life-long abstinence, Holland decided to take it one day at a time – pushing himself through a second month, then a third. He challenged himself to make it to his 26th birthday in June without a drink, planning to indulge in a celebratory blow-out. By then, however, he found the benefits of alcohol-free living were starting to outweigh the initial struggles.
‘I’m quite strong-willed. When I decide to do something, I’m really gonna do it,’ he tells Men’s Health. ‘I leaned on close ones a lot: family, friends, old colleagues, new colleagues, people who reached out who I didn’t know who were also sober.’
In those early days, he also received a piece of advice from his lawyer, which he describes as ‘really poignant’: you’ll never wake up the morning after a night out and wish you had a drink. ‘That really rang true to me,’ says Holland, ‘because my problem was that I would have one drink and be fine, and then I would just go too far.’
This year, Holland launched his new brand of non-alcoholic beer, Bero, which comes in three variations: Kingston Golden Pils, Edge Hill Hazy IPA and Noon Wheat (the latter named after his and fiancée Zendaya’s dog).
He’s aware that the new launch brings added pressure to his sobriety: ‘You can’t sing this song and then not walk the walk,’ he says. ‘I think part of me, when I announced it, I almost felt vindicated or relieved.’
Read the full interview here and in the March issue of Men’s Health UK, on sale now.
You Might Also Like
