Alec Baldwin Celebrates 39 Years of Sobriety, Reflects on Addiction Struggles
By Movieguide® Contributor
Actor Alec Baldwin recently admitted that he had a cocaine and alcohol addiction in his younger days and is now 39 years sober.
“I had a white-hot problem every day for two years,” he said on the May 1 episode of “Our Way with Paul Anka and Skip Bronson.” “I think I snorted a line of cocaine from here to Saturn.”
“I mean, cocaine was like coffee back then,” Baldwin said. “Everybody was doing it all day long.”
After he stopped the cocaine consumption, he became addicted to alcohol.
“Because I stopped doing drugs, my drinking increased, which they tell you is going to happen. And that did happen. I just started drinking,” he said.
“I don’t discuss this a lot,” Baldwin said. “I discuss it every now and then when it makes sense. I’m 39 years sober. I got sober Feb. 23, 1985.”
The actor doesn’t miss his drug use days and turns to meditation when he wants to wind down.
“I do try to meditate,” the father of seven told Anka and Bronson. However, that’s easier said than done. “Meditating with seven children is like trying to play pingpong on the deck of an aircraft carrier.”
Baldwin currently faces a potential prison sentence of up to 18 months if found guilty of manslaughter for the death of RUST cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
Baldwin was holding a gun that shot Hutchins with a live round on the set of the western flick in October 2021. His trial will happen this summer from July 10 to July 19, per Deadline.
The movie’s armorer was recently sentenced to 18 months in prison. Movieguide® reported on April 17:
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, weapons handler for the western movie RUST, just got sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday.
“You alone turned a safe weapon into a lethal weapon,” said Judge Mary Marlow Sommer after she rejected the defense’s requests for probation and counseling. “But for you, Ms. Hutchins would be alive, a husband would have his partner and a little boy would have his mother.”
Gutierrez-Reed received the maximum sentence allowed for involuntary manslaughter in the state of New Mexico.
Baldwin’s legal team filed for his case to be dismissed.
“Baldwin’s motion to dismiss argued that the prosecution had acted unethically and failed to present crucial evidence to a grand jury,” Fox News reported.
“Enough is enough,” the court documents said. “This is an abuse of the system, and an abuse of an innocent person whose rights have been trampled to the extreme.”
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