Brad Pitt Says He Is Drinking Again After Seven Years Sober - and Why He Thinks This Time Is Different

Caption: Brad Pitt at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival. Credit: Harald Krichel, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Brad Pitt Says He Is No Longer Sober

Brad Pitt, who had spoken for years about giving up alcohol, now says he is drinking again after seven years sober. “I was sober for seven years. And then I got back off the wagon,” Pitt said in an interview with Esquire published in August 2026. He described the change as deliberate and limited: “Well, I can have a few. But I can’t have a lot. I have to be professional about it.”

For an actor who had made his sobriety a matter of public record, the comments mark a clear shift from the way he had discussed his recovery for most of the past decade.

The Split That Started the Sobriety

Pitt’s sobriety began in 2016, the year Angelina Jolie filed for divorce following an alleged incident aboard a private plane, according to reporting on his recovery. The end of the marriage became the turning point that pushed him to stop drinking, a decision he has returned to repeatedly in interviews since.

At the time, Pitt framed the choice in plain terms. “I had taken things as far as I could take it, so I removed my drinking privileges,” he said in remarks quoted in coverage of his recovery.

Inside the Recovery

Pitt joined a 12-step program in 2016 and attended an all-men group, which he described as a “safe space where there was little judgment.” In the period that followed, he spoke about the early relief of sobriety, saying at one point, “I’m really happy it’s been half a year now. I’ve got my feelings in my fingertips again.”

He also credited actor Bradley Cooper with helping him get there. “I got sober because of this guy and every day has been happier ever since,” Pitt said of Cooper. For years, that was the throughline of how he talked about drinking: something he had left behind, and was better for leaving.

Why He Says He Can Drink Now

The Esquire comments reframe that narrative. Pitt said he returned to alcohol “in a more restrained manner,” and acknowledged testing his own limits along the way. “I got overconfident a couple times, went, Yep, nope, not good for me. Not in large quantities,” he said.

His framing throughout is one of control rather than a full return to old habits, stressing moderation and professionalism. He did not, in the published remarks, give a single specific reason for resuming after seven years.

What Has Changed and What Has Not

The through-story of Pitt’s public life for nearly a decade was a clean break from drinking, tied to one of the most scrutinized divorces in Hollywood. The Esquire interview complicates that story without erasing it: by his own account he is drinking again, but describes doing so cautiously and on tight terms.

What remains unsettled is how that squares with the recovery narrative he built in public, and whether “a few” holds as a durable arrangement or becomes its own storyline. For now, the only account is his, and it is one of a man saying he has changed the rules he once set for himself.

References: Esquire | Brad Pitt Shares He’s No Longer Sober, Drinks in Moderation | Everything Brad Pitt Has Said About His Sobriety - Including Why He Quit Drinking