Tom Holland has revealed the details of his relationship with alcohol, admitting that he was ‘enslaved’ by it before giving it up.
The news comes after the star revealed last month that he has been sober for over a year. He opened up about filming his new Apple TV show, The Crowded Room, and how that caused “bit of a meltdown” in his personal life.
Holland’s rise to fame began when he was cast as the web-slinging superhero, Spider-Man, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Prior to this, Holland had made appearances in a few smaller-budget films and theatre productions. However, his portrayal of Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War and subsequent solo films, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, catapulted him to global stardom.
However, all this hasn’t come without its difficulties, as the star opened up about in his interview with Entertainment Weekly.
He revealed that filming his new crime thriller series made him wake up, after he started spotting similarities between himself and his character in the show, Danny Sullivan. In the show, Sullivan is arrested in connection with a 1979 shooting, but he is based off the real life crimes of Billy Milligan, who was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder.
“I was seeing myself in [the character], but in my personal life,” Holland told the outlet.
“I remember having a bit of a meltdown at home and thinking, like, ‘I’m going to shave my head. I need to shave my head because I need to get rid of this character.’ And, obviously, we were mid-shooting, so I decided not to… It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
He described the show as an insight into the power of the human mind” and “the ways in which we can deal with trauma”.
“Learning about mental health and the power of it, and speaking to psychiatrists about Danny and Billy’s struggles, has been something that has been so informative to my own life,” he continued.
For example, he shared that he is now better at recognising “triggers” such as social media “that stress me out”.
“[I hope Crowded Room viewers] have more respect and more sympathy for people who are going through mental health issues…I hope that people will feel educated about the powers of mental health, the struggles, [and] our incredible abilities to survive.”
However, in his latest interview with Jay Shetty, the star has opened up further about details of his struggles, and opened up about his troublesome relationship with alcohol after publicly announcing his sobriety back in May.
“It was all I could think about. I was waking up thinking about it, I was checking the clock, “When’s it 12?” And it just really scared me,” he said, via the Daily Mail.
“I was like, ‘Wow, maybe I have a little bit of an alcohol thing,’ so I sort of decided to just punish myself and say I’ll do February as well, I’ll do two months off,” he continued.
After the 2 months passed, he revealed he was “still really struggling”.
“I couldn’t be social, I felt like I couldn’t go to the pub and have a lime soda, I couldn’t go out for dinner, I was really, really struggling and I started to really worry that I had an alcohol problem.”
He then decided to go until June without alcohol.
“I said to myself, if I can do six months without alcohol, then I can prove to myself that I don’t have a problem,” Holland shared, adding, “by the time I had got to June 1, I was the happiest I had ever been in my life.”
