Everything Ben Affleck Has Said About His Sobriety Through the Years

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Everything Ben Affleck Has Said About His Sobriety Through the Years

Growing all the time. Ben Affleck has been vocal about his sobriety throughout his career, starting with his openness about his family history and rehab stays. Before the Dazed and Confused actor rose to fame in the early ‘90s, his parents divorced when he was just 12 years old. At the time, Affleck didn’t know that his father was an alcoholic, but he told Barbara Walters in 2012 that he recalled his dad drinking “a lot." He explained: "He, you know, drank all day, every day and to his credit, he got sober ultimately.” After starring in Good Will Hunting with his longtime friend Matt Damon, Affleck chose to stop drinking in 1997. "I just wanted to stop. I started regretting some things I did when I was drunk,” he told a reporter at the time via Fox News. “It's funny to be obnoxious or out of control, but then it's like, 'I think I hurt that person's feelings, 'I made a fool of myself' or 'I didn't want to kiss that girl.' I have almost no inhibitions, so it's dangerous for me." It wasn’t until 2001 that the Pearl Harbor actor sought treatment for his alcoholism. He has since been to rehab multiple times, including a stay in 2017 and 2018. Us Weekly confirmed that his August 2018 stay came after his ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, with whom he shares daughters Violet and Seraphina and son Samuel, staged an intervention with the help of a sober coach at his California home. The Runner producer suffered another setback in October 2019, two months after celebrating one-year of sobriety. Affleck was photographed leaving a Halloween party intoxicated. [jwplayer unbeWEs9-l3ahXupL] Four months later, Affleck spoke out about the incident and opened up about his family’s history of “alcoholism and mental illness” during a New York Times interview, saying, “The legacy of that is quite powerful and somethings hard to shake.” The Deep Water actor explained that his father “didn’t really get sober” until he was 19, noting it wasn’t easy to diagnose himself as an alcoholic despite seeing it in his family. "It took me a long time to fundamentally, deeply, without a hint of doubt, admit to myself that I am an alcoholic. The next drink will not be different,” he said in February 2020. After his Halloween relapse, Affleck admitted that falling off the wagon “is embarrassing,” telling the outlet he wished it didn’t happen. "I really wish it wasn't on the internet for my kids to see. Jen and I did our best to address it and be honest,” he added. In January 2021, Affleck revealed during an episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast that he feels “really good” despite having sober slips here and there. Scroll down to revisit Affleck’s most honest quotes about sobriety.

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Party Life

The Daredevil actor completed a 30-day rehab program in Malibu, California in the summer of 2001. He later told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012 about that time in his life, saying, "I went to rehab for being 29 and partying too much and not having a lot of boundaries and to clear my head and try to get some idea of who I wanted to be. It was more a 'let me get myself straight' before it became a rite of passage."

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No Shame

“I have completed treatment for alcohol addiction; something I’ve dealt with in the past and will continue to confront,” Affleck wrote via Facebook in March 2017 after his second rehab stint. “I want to live life to the fullest and be the best father I can be. I want my kids to know there is no shame in getting help when you need it, and to be a source of strength for anyone out there who needs help but is afraid to take the first step.”

He added: “I’m lucky to have the love of my family and friends, including my co-parent, Jen, who has supported me and cared for our kids as I’ve done the work I set out to do. This was the first of many steps being taken towards a positive recovery.”

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Feeling Supported

Garner brought the Argo director to a 40-day treatment facility in August 2018 for his alcoholism struggles. “The support I have received from my family, colleagues and fans means more to me than I can say. It’s given me the strength and support to speak about my illness with others,” Affleck wrote via Instagram in October 2018 after completing his third rehab stay. “Battling any addiction is a lifelong and difficult struggle. Because of that, one is never really in or out of treatment. It is a full-time commitment. I am fighting for myself and my family.”

The Oscar winner continued: “As I’ve had to remind myself, if you have a problem, getting help is a sign of courage, not weakness or failure. With acceptance and humility, I continue to avail myself with the help of so many people and I am grateful to all those who are there for me. I hope down the road I can offer an example to others who are struggling.”

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Getting Candid

“Some people are sort of uncomfortable, [but] it doesn’t really bother me to talk about alcoholism and being an alcoholic,” the Triple Frontier star said on the Today show in March 2019. “It’s part of my life. It’s something that I deal with. It doesn’t have to sort of subsume my whole identity and be everything, but it is something that you know you have to work at.” Affleck acknowledged that he “had a problem” and has continued to seek help to overcome it. “I take some pride in that,” he added. “It’s about yourself, your life, your family and … we encounter these kinds of hurdles and we have to deal with them.”

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Taking Ownership

After celebrating one year of sobriety in August 2019, the Massachusetts native relapsed while attending a Halloween party in October 2019. The slip up was captured on film and Affleck was seen stumbling out of the bash while intoxicated. The actor owned up to his mistake the following day, telling photographers via the Daily Mail, “Well, you know, it happens. It’s a slip, but I’m not going to let it derail me.”

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Divorce Woes

The Good Will Hunting actor opened up in February 2020 about how his public divorce influenced his drinking habits. "People with compulsive behavior, and I am one, have this kind of basic discomfort all the time that they're trying to make go away. You're trying to make yourself feel better with eating or drinking or sex or gambling or shopping or whatever. But that ends up making your life worse," Affleck told the New York Times. "Then you do more of it to make that discomfort go away. Then the real pain starts. It becomes a vicious cycle you can't break. That's at least what happened to me."

He explained: "I drank relatively normally for a long time. What happened was that I started drinking more and more when my marriage was falling apart. This was 2015, 2016. My drinking, of course, created more marital problems."

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Halloween Horrors

The Gone Girl star reflected on his Halloween party relapse in October 2019 during an appearance on Good Morning America in February 2020. “I did watch some of it, although not the whole, whole thing. I know what it looks like to be drunk. I don’t need to watch any more of it,” Affleck said of the viral TMZ footage from his drunk outing.

Affleck said he took the sobriety slip as a sign that he needed to take a step back and be with family. “I took the last half of the year off. And I just got to be dad. Drive ‘em to school, pick ‘em up. Go to the swim meet That’s where the parenting happens — it’s in the cracks,” he said. “I have to be the man I wanna be at this point. I don’t have any more room for failure of that kind.” He added that he’s doing his “very, very best” to stay healthy.

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For the Kids

"I really don't want my children to pay for my sins," Affeck told ABC News' Diane Sawyer in an emotional interview in February 2020. "Or to be afraid for me, which is one of that hard parts of being the child of an alcoholic. You think, 'What if my dad gets drunk? What if he does something stupid? What if he ends up on TMZ, and it's on my newsfeed and other kids see it?'"

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Character Connection

Affleck revealed in March 2020 that he was trying to “bring some personal experience” to his character Jack Cunningham in the film The Way Back. In the movie, Affleck plays a former high school basketball star who returns to his alma mater to coach while confronting his alcoholism. “There are things about this character I really could connect to: being a recovering alcoholic, going through family strife, a divorce,” he told Us and other reporters. “But also, there were things that I had to really use my imagination for that I couldn’t imagine. And one of those things was being good at basketball, which I’m not particularly.”

He added: “One of the beautiful things about a movie that allows for expression of genuine feeling, real people conquering real problems that at end of the day feel like a rich fullness, I guess in kind of a cathartic sense.”

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Moving Forward

Affleck reflected on the ups and downs of his career during a January 2021 episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast, revealing why he filmed Batman after “suffering” through 2017’s Justice League due to his battle with alcoholism. “I did Batman because I wanted to do it for my kids. I wanted to do something my son would dig. I mean, my kids didn’t see Argo,” he said. “I started drinking too much around the time of Justice League, and it’s a hard thing to confront and face and deal with. I’ve been sober for a while now, and I feel really good — as healthy and good as I’ve ever felt.”

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Facing the Past

The director and producer looked back on filming 2020’s The Way Back during a January 2021 discussion with The Hollywood Reporter, revealing what it was like to play an alcoholic as a recovering alcoholic. "Alcoholism, in and of itself, and compulsive behavior, are not inherently super interesting, but what is sometimes interesting is what you discover about yourself in the course of recovery and trying to figure out what went wrong, how to fix it, how you want your life to look and what kind of ethics you want to live by," he said. "So yes, I'm an alcoholic. Yes, I had a relapse. Yes, I went into recovery again. And then I went and did that movie." He continued: "I'm not good enough to just invent it from whole cloth, you know? I didn't have to do research for the alcoholism aspect of the movie — that was covered. It was the Daniel Day-Lewis approach to that!"

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What Might Have Been

During a December 2021 interview on The Howard Stern Show, Affleck said that he "would probably still be drinking" if he hadn't gotten divorced from Garner. "That was part of why I started drinking alcohol — I was trapped," he said of his marriage. "I was like, 'I can't leave because of my kids, but I am not happy. What do I do?' What I did was drink a bottle of scotch on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution."

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Happy to Help

"I became — out of no desire of my own — one of the poster boys for actor alcoholism and recovery and the whole thing. And the best part about that is that sometimes people call me up and they’re like, 'Hey, can you help me out?'" Affleck told The Hollywood Reporter in March 2023. "And it makes me feel so good to do that. The big trick of 12-step is the reason they want you to help other people is because it actually helps you more. And often what I’ll say to people is, I would avoid [your addiction] coming out if I were you. You don’t need to be anybody’s poster child. You don’t need to f–king tell anybody. That’s why there’s two words on the front of the book. They’re just as important, both of them: Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s always anonymous."