Brad Pitt sobriety changed publicly when the 62-year-old said he is drinking again after seven years sober and is doing it in a more restrained manner. He told Esquire he is “off the wagon,” but added that the shift is limited: “I can have a few [glasses of wine]. But I can’t have a lot. I have to be professional about it.”
Esquire and the 18 months
The timeline matters because Pitt said he had been sober for seven years and also said he attended Alcoholics Anonymous for 18 months before this interview. That sequence gives the comment a clear recovery frame: this is not a casual aside, but a public update on where he says he stands now after a long stretch of abstinence.
Joe Schrank, a clinical social worker and policy advocate, pushed back on treating self-report as the last word. “Typically speaking, alcoholics are just a horrible source of information about themselves,” he said, while also adding that “The truth is, for most people, their recovery is a living, breathing thing that is evolving over time and it’s a spectrum.”
Joe Schrank and AA
That combination is the tension inside Pitt’s remarks: he says he can manage a few glasses of wine, while recovery-minded commenters on Reddit reacted skeptically to the claim. Schrank’s point leaves room for both readings. Some people do move from abstinence to moderate drinking after long periods away from alcohol, but the category still depends on behavior over time, not a single statement in an interview.
Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and addiction researcher at Stanford University, said there are important unknowns about Pitt’s journey. For readers tracking Brad Pitt sobriety, the practical takeaway is simple: the public has a declaration, not a clinical audit. The question is no longer whether he once stopped drinking, but whether his current pattern stays limited or slips back into something harder to control.
Reddit and recovery skepticism
At 62, Pitt has turned a private recovery status into a public one, and that makes every word count. The next real test is not the interview quote; it is whether his drinking remains at the level he described, or whether “a few” becomes the point where the story changes again.
