How Tom Holland unlocked the real secret to quitting alcohol for good
A lot has been written this week about how Tom Holland wound up quitting alcohol for good after years of feeling ‘enslaved’ to the drug, but what many people missed is how he did it.
The Spiderman actor’s story reveals what I believe to be perhaps the most important moment, the real secret to success, in any long-term recovery process.
And no, it’s not the initial decision to quit or cut back.
It’s the point that turns a quit alcohol fad into a long-term lifestyle change.
Specifically, like Neo in The Matrix (to lean on an overused trope), Holland reached that key point that each ex-drinker must face and choose their future.
The point where they’re presented with all the information about two very different realities and are forced to pick the one they want to live in.
How it started
To understand how Holland went from problem drinker to his current 1.5-year sobriety streak, it’s important to understand where it all began.
In an interview on the podcast On Purpose with Jay Shetty published this week, Holland explained how he decided to quit drinking after a bit of a holiday bender in late 2021.
He told the host that he’d wake up thinking about alcohol and fixating on when he could have a drink.
“I was definitely addicted to alcohol, not shying away from that at all,” he’s quoted as saying. “It just really scared me.”
So Holland did what a lot of people do when they feel things might be getting a little out of control.
He tried Dry January.
According to Holland, he succeeded in abstaining for the full month of January 2022, but, still concerned, he decided to “punish himself” with one more month of sobriety.
Happy with his progress, he then opted to push all the way to his birthday in June.
Enter the Pink Cloud Phase.
Holland told Shetty:
“By the time I got to June 1, I was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.
“I could sleep better. I could handle problems better, things that would go wrong on set, that would normally set me off, I could take in my stride.
“I had so much better mental clarity. I felt healthier, I felt fitter.”
The crossroads
Which brings us to the key moment that shifted Holland’s sober adventure into a total lifestyle change.
I’ve written about “sober months” like Dry January and Sober October before.
Here’s where I stand on them: yes, I think they’re good.
However, I do think there’s a dangerous side to them.
Every time one of these months rolls around, you see a lot of content from people who are trying the months out on a lark and describing their rationale and experiences.
Frequently, you’ll see this line: “I wanted to prove to myself I could do it.”
Honestly, I think if you’ve reached a point where you need to prove it to yourself that you can stop drinking, it’s probably indicative that you already have an issue.
And this is where I think the danger is.
Many people enter these months with good intentions but, having passed their personal test of self-control, exit them with a newly issued You May Continue Drinking Now Pass.
They celebrate by getting wasted and, within a few days or weeks, they’ve slipped back into their old lifestyle.
I want to be really clear: I’m not being judgmental about that.
The times I tried to prove to myself that I could quit drinking if I wanted to are probably too many to count.
The number of times I said “I could quit if I wanted to, but I don’t want to” could fill a fairly large ledger.
It wasn’t until I decided I wanted a new reality — permanently — that it stuck.
The one I was living in was designed to keep me trapped.
I had a nice family life, a home, a good-paying job.
Yet, despite having money, I always felt like I was just falling short.
Despite projecting an outward image of middle-class “success”, inside my soul I felt like a failure after years of disappointing myself and putting off my entrepreneurial dreams (too tired, too busy drinking).
Despite looking “fit” from going to the gym all the time, I never felt “healthy”. My insides were being slowly poisoned to death.
So while my decision to quit alcohol last August (it’ll be a year next month) was definitely important — and it represents the start of my longest non-drinking streak in some 15 years — it wasn’t unique.
I’d decided to quit alcohol many, many times before.
It was the point, about a month later, when I was feeling happy, healthy, refreshed, optimistic, positive, and proud of myself — much the way Holland describes feeling when he reached his birthday sober — when my brain presented me with the life-changing option:
“You’ve done a great job, you’ve really turned things around … why not have a drink to celebrate?”
Holland’s choice
This is what alcohol does: it makes you forget what your baseline health is.
When you’re stuck the throes of addiction, you come to believe that always feeling tired, always feeling a bit cranky, always feeling lethargic about anything that doesn’t involve drinking alcohol — that it’s all normal.
The further away that you get from those days, the harder it is to remember just how terribly draining they were.
So maybe you think, “ah, I feel awesome, what’s the big deal having a few drinks?”
That first step into the quicksand is enough to pull most people under.
It got me more times than I care to remember.
Those who finally choose not to dip their toe in at that point are the ones who escape alcohol’s clutches long-term.
Holland reached what is truly the most important choice point — the one that comes weeks or months after quitting — and asked himself:
“Why am I so enslaved by this drink? Why am I so obsessed by the idea of having this drink?”
And he decided to walk away.
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