Alec Baldwin has been sober for 39 years – but admits he does “miss drinking.”
“I don’t discuss this a lot, I discuss it every now and then when it makes sense. I’m 39 years sober. I got sober February 23, 1985,” he said on Wednesday’s episode of the “Our Way with Paul Anka and Skip Bronson” podcast.
The “30 Rock” actor recalled having a “white hot problem every day for two years” when he lived in Los Angeles in the early 1980s.
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“I think I snorted a line of cocaine from here to Saturn. We did one on the rings of Saturn, then we came home, we took it home,” he shared. “I mean, cocaine was like coffee back then; everybody was doing it all day long. So I did a lot of coke.”
Baldwin, 66, eventually “stopped doing drugs,” but after his drinking increased as a result, he made the choice to become totally sober in 1985.
“The thing I miss is drinking. I don’t miss drugs at all, but I do miss drinking. I like to drink,” he admitted.
When asked what he does in place of drinking to “deal with the pressures of the outside forces,” Baldwin credits living in New York City for the last 45 years.
“New York relaxes me. I walk around, and I see aspects of it that I’ve never seen before,” he explained, noting that he goes to lunch and coffee with friends and frequents arts events like the opera and the ballet.
“I [also try] to meditate,” he added. “[Though] meditating with seven children is like trying to play ping pong on the deck of an aircraft carrier –– it’s a real pain in the ass.”
The Emmy winner and his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, share seven children together under the age of 10. He also shares daughter Ireland with ex-wife Kim Basinger.
Baldwin previously reflected on his sobriety journey in his 2017 memoir, “Nevertheless,” admitting in the tome that he was secretly “overdosing on drugs” in his 20s.
“I know that at that time, what I describe [in the book] — overdosing on drugs — which I’ve kept very private for years and years and years. I think I would have gotten it eventually, but, I’m glad I got [sober] when I did ’cause not many people get sober when they’re young,” he said in an interview with “Good Morning America” at the time.
Baldwin added that he was previously a “daily drug abuser” and “daily drinker” to help him deal with “a lot of pain.”
