Josh Brolin's 99-year-old grandma inspired his sobriety
Josh Brolin decided to get sober after visiting his 99-year-old grandmother on her deathbed.
Josh Brolin's 99-year-old grandmother inspired him to get sober.
The 56-year-old actor recalled how he "woke up on the sidewalk" for the "400th time" in his life and remembered he was supposed to be going to visit his dying relative, and it was seeing her smile when he walked into the room that made him realise he needed to turn his life around.
Speaking to Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson on the 'Where Everybody Knows Your Name' podcast, he said: "That last night that I drank, there was a hit and run at Del Taco. There was that.
"I woke up on the sidewalk. I didn't know where my car was. And it wasn't that that was rare. It was the 400th time that had happened. It was so normal when I woke up.
"But my grandmother was on her deathbed. I was supposed to have picked up my brother and taken them because 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? 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 that was it. I was done. I said, If this woman could get through 99 years on her on life's terms, how dare me?"
The 'No Country For Old Men' actor admitted he had "gotten away with a lot" until that point.
He continued: "I said, How dare me? I'd gotten away. I was 45 years old, and I had gotten away with a lot. Been in jail nine times, done a little bit of 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."
And Josh - who has Trevor, 36, and Eden, 30, with first wife Alice Adair and Westlyn, five, and three-year-old Chapel with spouse Kathryn Boyd - insisted he doesn't have any urge to drink any more because he enjoys his life so much.
Asked if he's ever tempted, he said: "I feel like something's been cultivated in me that I helped cultivate that my life now is better than my greatest romance of any drink I could have.
"I actually like my life. Not that I didn't before because I loved it before, except when I would write indecypherable texts. I didn't like that."
