Noah Centineo is getting candid about his ongoing substance abuse journey.
“I do think it’s just lucky I was able to recognize what was happening to me in my life and the patterns of destruction that I just continued to fortify and partake and participate in,” Centineo, 30, said on the Monday, August 17, episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast. “I went, ‘I think I’m at a crossroads. I think if I don’t figure this out and stop now, it’s going to get way worse.’ I believe that I was right.”
Centineo revealed in 2018, shortly after celebrating his 21st birthday, that he was sober. By 2020, he shared that he was no longer completely clean.
“I also had an overwhelming amount of support and love from a community, my parents and my sister and access to resources that make it a hell of a lot easier to recognize when things are going wrong,” the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before star recalled on Monday’s episode. “It was difficult for me, and it was my experience, and I’m still reckoning with that in my own ways in my own life. [It is] quite privileged … that I can even identify it.”
Centineo began experimenting with drugs shortly after landing the role of Jesus Foster on Freeform’s The Fosters. (Centineo replaced Jake T. Austin on the family dramedy during 2015’s season 3.)
“Before I was on The Fosters, I was just a Valley kid. I was, like, auditioning and hanging out with friends and smoking a lot of weed and partying. I wasn’t really doing hard drugs quite yet,” Centineo said. “I started to dabble right around the time right after I booked The Fosters, but it wasn’t really because of anything outside of, like, I was in a relationship with someone when I was 18. They were a little older, and they were doing it, and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, this is fun. You’re doing it. You’re cool. I think I love you.’”
According to Centineo, working on The Fosters “gave [him] a sense of comfort” to continue his “lifestyle” with his then-partner.
“I thought that I had a buffer because I was making enough money to, like, support that lifestyle,” he said. “By the time I turned 21, I woke up one morning, and there was a different guy looking outside of my head than the day before, and that scared me.”
In the years since he quit drinking, Centineo has stayed busy with a steady stream of film and TV projects.
“When I’m working, I try to be really really on the straight and narrow. There’s a huge responsibility on these projects, and I take them seriously,” the actor said. “My problem is if I have a couple days or weeks between the projects where I go home and I’m with my family, and I’m like, ‘I want to drink a bottle of wine with my sister and my mom or I want to drink whiskey with my dad,’ that’s when I end up, like, blowing out because I’ve been so regimented.”
If Centineo socially drinks, he says that he will end up feeling “terrible.”
“For me, the balance right now is [that] I’m back on the wagon, [the] proverbial wagon,” he stated. “I think I will be for a while.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
