I finally watched F1 on the flight home from Nashville. My friend and fellow Sober Curator Contributor Amy Liz Harrison had just finished a whirlwind weekend at Dollywood celebrating our annual soberthdays. She was sitting right next to me on the plane, typing like a maniac (and chuckling to herself), writing up our trip recap for The Sober Curator, when I put it on.
About twenty minutes in, I turned to her and said: “He looks good.” (Imagine the word good, but with like 10 o’s. = Gooooooooood)
Not in a tabloid way. Not in a “has he had work done” way. In a clear-eyed, genuinely present, something-shifted way. The kind of good that reads differently once you know what you’re looking at.
Brad Pitt has been sober since approximately 2016. As of 2026, that is nine years. He did not make a public announcement about it. He did not release a statement. He just stopped drinking, did the work, and started showing up differently — in interviews, on set, and apparently on a racing circuit in an Apple TV+ film that had Amy and me watching from 30,000 feet.
Sobriety Snapshot
| Sobriety Date | Approximately 2016 |
| Years Sober | ~9 years (as of 2026) |
| Substance | Alcohol |
| Turning Point | The breakdown of his marriage to Angelina Jolie and a private reckoning with how he had been living |
| Quote | “I was boozing too much. Cutting back has never been my mode.” |
The Struggle: The Version Nobody Saw Clearly
Brad Pitt spent years being one of the most photographed people on the planet. The drinking was visible in the way that things are visible when nobody is looking for them — present in the background of a decade of tabloid coverage, normalized by the industry he worked in, and managed well enough that it did not become the headline.
He has described himself as someone who was “boozing too much” — his words — and who recognized that moderation was never going to be his relationship with alcohol. Cutting back has never been his mode. He is, by his own account, more of an all-or-nothing person, which is a pattern that runs through a lot of long-term sobriety stories and tends to make the decision to stop cleaner once it finally gets made.
The drinking was not separate from the rest of what was happening in his life during those years. The marriage to Angelina Jolie, the family they built together, the incident on the private plane in September 2016 that triggered an FBI investigation — later closed without charges — and the divorce that followed. All of it was happening at once, and alcohol was woven through the fabric of it.
He has not told that story in a linear, public way. What he has done is reference it honestly in interviews, without drama and without deflection, in a way that makes clear he knows exactly what role his drinking played.
The Turning Point: On His Knees
In a GQ interview, Pitt described the period around 2016 as one where he found himself “on his knees” — a phrase that carries a specific weight in recovery culture and that he used deliberately.
He has talked about that period as a reckoning — not just with alcohol, but with the version of himself he had been running for years. The marriage ending. The family restructuring. The private consequences of choices that had been building for a long time.
He got sober. He went to Alcoholics Anonymous. He has spoken about the specific value of sitting in a room with other people who were not impressed by him — people who were there for the same reason he was, who had no interest in the celebrity and every interest in the honesty. He described those meetings as a place where he could just be a person working on his problems, which is not an experience that is easy to find when you are Brad Pitt.
He attended meetings, and he has credited that community with giving him the foundation he needed to stay sober when the external chaos of his life was at its most intense.
The Recovery: Bradley Cooper, Sculpture, and Showing Up
In 2023, at a screening event for Babylon, Bradley Cooper — who has spoken openly about his own recovery from alcohol and drugs — said from the podium: “I got sober because of this guy.” He was pointing at Brad Pitt.
That detail is worth sitting with. Cooper has been public about his sobriety for years. The fact that Pitt’s own recovery was part of what made Cooper’s possible — and that Cooper chose to say so publicly — is the kind of specific, verifiable, emotionally resonant detail that tells you something real about who Pitt has become in sobriety.
The public acknowledgment was rare for him. The private work was anything but.
He has talked about throwing himself into sculpture and painting after his divorce. Art as a way of processing what therapy and meetings were also working through — a physical, tactile practice that required presence and gave him somewhere to put the intensity that alcohol used to absorb. His work has been exhibited. He takes it seriously. It is not a celebrity hobby. At The Sober Curator, we are big proponents of making things with our hands. If you join BACKSTAGE with The Sober Curator, you’ll find we’ll be making something with our hands one a month in our “Studio” night.
He has also spoken about therapy, about the ongoing work of understanding his own patterns, and about the specific difficulty of doing that work while also being one of the most scrutinized people in the world.
Life After: The Work Kept Coming
He turned 60 in December 2023. There is a version of Brad Pitt who might have rolled into that milestone looking a little worse for wear — the tabloid version, the one the gossip cycle had been writing for years. That is not the version that showed up.
The version that showed up has been working steadily and well. Babylon in 2022. Bullet Train in 2022. F1 in 2025. A production company, Plan B Entertainment, that has been behind some of the more interesting films of the last decade — Moonlight, 12 Years a Slave, The Big Short. He has not coasted. He has not disappeared. He has shown up, year after year, doing the work.
In interviews from the last few years, there is a quality to him that reads differently from the pre-2016 version. More settled. More direct. Less performing and more present. He laughs more easily — and if you have spent any time around people in long-term recovery, you know exactly what that shift looks like and what it means.
Nine years sober. Sixty-something years old. Still one of the most watchable people in any room he walks into.
Just a man who got honest with himself, did the work, and kept showing up. And for that, I have mad respect for him as a human being.
Sources & Further Reading
- Brad Pitt Covers GQ, Opens Up About Sobriety (GQ, 2019)
- Brad Pitt: Portrait of the Artist (The New York Times Style Magazine, 2019)
- Brad Pitt Credits Bradley Cooper for Sobriety at NBR Awards (Variety, 2020)
- F1 Film Coverage — Apple Original Films / AP
F1 Official Trailer
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How long has Brad Pitt been sober?
Brad Pitt has been sober since approximately 2016. As of 2026, that is roughly nine years. He has not cited a specific sobriety date publicly.
What did Brad Pitt struggle with?
Alcohol. He has described himself as someone who was “boozing too much” and who recognized that moderation was not a realistic option for him. He has not spoken publicly about other substances.
Why did Brad Pitt get sober?
The breakdown of his marriage to Angelina Jolie and the events of 2016 appear to have been the catalyst. He has described finding himself “on his knees” during that period and making the decision to get sober as part of a broader reckoning with how he had been living.
Did Brad Pitt go to AA?
Yes. He has spoken about attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for approximately a year and a half, describing them as valuable specifically because the other people in the room were not interested in his celebrity — they were there for the same reason he was.
What is Brad Pitt’s connection to Bradley Cooper’s sobriety?
At a 2023 screening event for Babylon, Bradley Cooper said publicly: “I got sober because of this guy” — pointing at Pitt. Cooper has been open about his own recovery for years. The specific nature of Pitt’s role in that process has not been detailed publicly beyond Cooper’s statement.
Does Brad Pitt talk about sobriety publicly?
Yes, though carefully and without making it the centerpiece of his public identity. He has discussed his drinking and his decision to stop in interviews with GQ and other publications. He is honest about it when asked without positioning himself as a recovery spokesperson.
