Yahoo Lifestyle Denzel Washington Has Been Sober for 10 Years, Says He Used to Drink Two Bottles of Wine a Day and ‘I’ve Done Damage to the Body’
Denzel Washington revealed to Esquire magazine as part of a recent cover story that he is 10 years sober. He cut off alcohol at 60 years old after a 15-year drinking pattern that started in the late 1990s. Washington said he never got “strung out” on alcohol but was more or less drinking daily for over a decade. He event built a 10,000-bottle wine cellar in 1999.
“Wine was my thing, and now I was popping $4,000 bottles just because that’s what was left,” Washington said. “And then later in those years I’d call Gil Turner’s Fine Wines & Spirits on Sunset Boulevard and say, ‘Send me two bottles, the best of this or that.’ And my wife’s saying, ‘Why do you keep ordering just two?’ I said, ‘Because if I order more, I’ll drink more. So I kept it to two bottles, and I would drink them both over the course of the day.”
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“I had this ideal idea of wine tastings and all that—which is what it was at first. And that’s a very subtle thing. I mean, I drank the best. I drank the best,” Washington said, noting how he tricked himself into thinking alcohol wasn’t an issue when in reality he was having two bottles of a wine a day.
“I’ve done a lot of damage to the body. We’ll see. I’ve been clean,” the Oscar winner added. “Be 10 years this December. I stopped at sixty and I haven’t had a thimble’s worth since. Things are opening up for me now—like being 70. It’s real. And it’s okay. This is the last chapter—if I get another 30, what do I want to do? My mother made it to 97.”
In addition to quitting alcohol, Washington said that he’s now eating healthier and working out with a trainer in order to be the healthiest version of himself as possible.
“I’m doing the best I can. And not only alcohol—forget all that. Strength,” Washington said. “About two years ago my good friend, my little brother, Lenny Kravitz, said, ‘D, I wanna hook you up with a trainer.’ And he did, and he’s another man of God. I started with him February of last year. He makes the meals for me and we’re training, and I’m now 190-something pounds on my way to 185. I was looking at pictures of myself and Pauletta at the Academy Awards for Macbeth, and I’m just looking fat, with this dyed hair, and I said, Those days are over, man. I feel like I’m getting strong. Strong is important.”
Head over to Esquire’s website to read Washington’s cover story in its entirety.
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