How Josh Brolin's 99-year-old grandmother inspired him to get sober

How Josh Brolin’s 99-year-old grandmother inspired him to get sober

Published: November 25, 2024

How this actor’s 99-year-old grandmother inspired him to get sober

By Movieguide® Contributor

MCU actor Josh Brolin recalled how an encounter with his 99-year-old grandmother made him realize there was more to life than just drinking.

Brolin suffered from alcoholism for thirty years.

“I was born to drink. I was born to drink. My mother drank exactly like me, and I was raised to be a man and drink like the male equivalent of my mother,” he says wrote in an excerpt from his new memoir “From Under the Truck.”

At the age of 15, he had already hit rock bottom in his drinking habit, and he did not give up the sin until he was 45.

“There was a collision at Del Taco, (and I) woke up on the sidewalk.” Brolin told Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson’s podcast ‘Where Everybody Knows Your Name’: per PEOPLE. “I didn’t know where my car was, and it wasn’t that rare. That was only, you know, the 400th time it happened.”

Although this happened often, this time was different because Brolin had to pick up his brother that evening and go to the hospital to see their grandmother, who was on her deathbed.

“Anyway, I woke up on the sidewalk and went inside. My brother called me. ‘Where are you?’ I picked him up and ended up walking into that hospital,” Brolin said. “Everyone knew when I walked into the room, (my grandmother) picked her head up and looked at me and smiled and that was it. I was done. I said, ‘If this woman could survive 99 years on life’s terms, how dare I?’

“I had gotten away with (so much), I was 45 years old and I had gotten away with a lot, been to jail nine times, done a little bit of whatever,” he continued. “So I thought, I wonder if I can do half of my life like this and then do this half of my life like that. Then I live two lives and not just one.”

The actor has since taken his sobriety seriously and has grown to love the new life he’s living.

“I like being sober. I have more fun,” he says saidand added, “There’s nothing I experience that I’m absolutely certain wouldn’t be worse if I drank.”

“I feel like something has been cultivated in me that I helped cultivate that, that my life now is better than my greatest romance of any drink,” Brolin said. “I actually love my life. Not that I didn’t do that before, because I used to love it, except when I wrote indecipherable lyrics. That, I didn’t like that.”

Brolin isn’t the only MCU actor to get sober.