Since then, Pitt has been vocal about how joining a 12-step program helped him maintain his sobriety. In a June 2025 episode of the podcast Armchair Expert, he told host Dax Shepard that, even though he was "shy" initially, he found it easy to be vulnerable in meetings.
"I was pretty much on my knees, and I was really open," Pitt said. "I was trying anything and everyone. Anything anyone threw at me. It was a difficult time. I needed rebooting. I needed to wake the f--- up in some areas. And it just meant a lot to me."
From why he quit drinking to which Hollywood A-lister he looks up to, here's everything Brad Pitt has said about his sobriety.
In a 2012 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Pitt opened up about his struggle with fame after his breakout role in the 1992 film A River Runs Through It. Feeling "really sick" of himself, the actor smoked weed to cope with his depression.
"I was hiding out from the celebrity thing," he said. "I was smoking way too much dope; I was sitting on the couch and just turning into a doughnut ... I was doing the same thing every night and numbing myself to sleep -- the same routine: Couldn't wait to get home and hide out."
It wasn't until he witnessed "extreme" poverty while on a trip to Morocco in the mid-to-late '90s that Pitt decided to quit smoking.
"I just quit," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "I stopped grass then -- I mean, pretty much -- and decided to get off the couch."
Pitt told GQ in 2017 that he couldn't remember "a day" since he left college when he "wasn't boozing or had a spliff, or something."
"Truthfully I could drink a Russian under the table with his own vodka," he said. "I was a professional. I was good."
But he said he decided to make some lifestyle changes when he began to build his family with Jolie, with whom he shares six children.
"You realize that a lot of it is ... pacifiers," Pitt said. "And I'm running from feelings. I'm really, really happy to be done with all of that. I mean I stopped everything except boozing when I started my family."
The Fight Club actor added that he realized he was "boozing too much" in 2016 and was happy to be six months sober at the time of the interview. Pitt said, "I'm really happy it's been half a year now, which is bittersweet, but I've got my feelings in my fingertips again."
Pitt got even more serious about his sobriety following his highly publicized breakup with Jolie in 2016.
The Maria actress filed for divorce days after an incident aboard the former couple's private plane. According to court documents, Pitt allegedly got into a drunken argument with Jolie while they were flying from France back to their home in Los Angeles.
During the dispute, a source said he was allegedly "verbally abusive" and became "physical" with Jolie and one of their children. In a 2024 court filing, Jolie's lawyers alleged he was abusive toward multiple children.
Pitt denied the allegations, and the FBI and Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services concluded their investigations with no findings of abuse. However, he told The New York Times that the split prompted him to join a 12-step program.
"I had taken things as far as I could take it," he said in 2019. "So I removed my drinking privileges."
In 2016, the Ad Astra actor joined a 12-step program and started attending an all-men group, which included Shepard. He said he found the meetings a "freeing" way to expose the "ugly sides" of himself.
"You had all these men sitting around being open and honest in a way I have never heard," Pitt told The New York Times. "It was this safe space where there was little judgment, and therefore little judgment of yourself."
In his acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor at the 2020 National Board of Review Annual Awards Gala, Pitt praised actor Bradley Cooper, who had presented him with the award.
"Bradley just put his daughter to bed and rushed over here to do this," Pitt said. "He's a sweetheart. I got sober because of this guy and every day has been happier ever since."
Cooper himself has been sober for over two decades.