Josh Brolin Details Poignant Moment That Sparked Sobriety

Josh Brolin has revealed the moment he hit rock bottom and realized he had to get sober once and for all.

The No Country For Old Men actor has been open about his sobriety over the years and previously revealed on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast that he first went sober when he was 19—but it wasn’t long until he started drinking again.

Brolin quit drinking once again when he was 29 but this stint would only last five years. He first entered rehab in 2013 for substance abuse after several public altercations in which he appeared to be intoxicated. This was the same year he split from his then-wife, actor Diane Lane, after eight years of marriage.

He ultimately got sober again at 45, following an interaction with his late grandmother. Appearing on an episode of the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast hosted by Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson, Brolin discussed the moment that resulted in him giving up alcohol once and for all.

Newsweek emailed a spokesperson for Brolin for comment on Wednesday.

“That last night that I drank, there was a hit and run at Del Taco, there was that,” he explained.

“There was, um, I woke up on the sidewalk, I didn’t know where my car was and it wasn’t that that was rare, that was just, you know, the 400th time that it happened, it was so normal when I woke up. But my grandmother—I was supposed to be at my, my grandmother was on her deathbed.”

Brolin said he was supposed to pick up his brother and take him to the hospital so they could visit their grandmother.

“I was the one in the family that put everything together and structured everything and controlled everything. Anyway, I woke up on the sidewalk, went inside, my brother called me, ‘Where are you?'” he recounted.

“[I] picked him up, walked into that hospital eventually and my grandmother—who was 99 at the time—picked her head up. Everybody knew when I walked into the room—picked her head up and looked at me and smiled and I was done.

“I said, ‘If this woman could get through 99 years on her, on life’s terms, how dare me.’ … and I’d gotten away with m—I was 45 years old and I had done, I’d done, you know I had gotten away with a lot. Been in jail nine times, you know, done a little bit of stu—you know, whatever.

“So I thought, ‘I wonder if I could do that half of life like that and then do this half of life like this. Then I get to live two lives and not just one well done.”

When Harrelson asked the actor if he was ever “dying” to have a drink while he was around those who were drinking, he said “no.”

“I feel like something’s been cultivated in me that I helped cultivate that, that my life now is better than my greatest romance of any drink I could have,” Brolin responded.

“I actually like my life. Not that I didn’t before, because I loved it before, except when I would write indecipherable texts. That—I didn’t like that.”