Yahoo Lifestyle "I Was Doing A Lot Of Drugs": Noah Centineo Opened Up About Getting Sober For A Year During The Height Of "To All The Boys"
This post contains mentions of substance abuse.
When To All the Boys I've Loved Before hit Netflix in the summer of 2018, the stars Lana Condor and Noah Centineo were virtually catapulted to household names overnight.
To All the Boys was a runaway success for Netflix, and it led to two more movies, which were also adapted from Jenny Han's beloved book series.
The To All the Boys movies marked some of their earliest major roles. Lana had previously only appeared in X-Men: Apocalypse, while Noah had guest-starred on several TV shows and starred on The Fosters.
Noah also recently reprised his role as Peter Kavinsky in the spinoff TV series, XO, Kitty.
For Noah, landing the role of Peter Kavinsky was the culmination of years of hard work, as he had started auditioning in Hollywood when he was around 8 years old.
Now, looking back on his time in the To All the Boys series, Noah is opening up about how it also marked a period of personal growth for him as well, namely a period in his life when he realized he needed to get sober.
While promoting Season 2 of his Netflix series, The Recruit, Noah swung by the Chicks in the Office podcast to discuss playing an action hero, how his life completely changed after To All the Boys, and his relationship with sobriety.
"By the time I did To All the Boys, I had not been through my, like, rage phase. I got sober when I was 21 from everything for about a year. And that was kind of that whole To All the Boys phase," Noah told Chicks in the Office hosts Ria Ciuffo and Fran Mariano.
Speaking about this time in his life, Noah said, "I was so unhappy. I was able to pay my bills for the first time. I was, like, completely financially stable and secure. I was working regularly. And I was doing a lot of drugs. I wasn't doing anything crazy, but I was just doing drugs a lot and drinking all the time. Every day. And I was young. I was 20 years old. And I had been doing that for a couple of years."
In an interview with Harper's Bazaar in 2020, Noah detailed his drug use more in detail. He said he tried "everything," saying, "There wasn't really much I wouldn’t do. I never, ever injected anything, which is good. I smoked a lot of things. I was really upset, man. It was a really dark time in my life."
Noah told the outlet that his use of drugs was during a wild period in his life from around 17 to 21, where he and his friends were partying nearly every night. He said he and his friends liked to "take Molly and talk for five hours and like get to the bottom of some really deeply philosophical existential questions."
He continued, saying, "So, I had a career that I was proud of. I was making enough money to pay my rent and put a little bit away. And, so, you would think I should be super stoked and super happy, and I just wasn't."
Noah said what ultimately led him to realize he needed to get sober from drugs was that one day, the world "just looked different," and it felt like "something had kind of broken a little bit." He said it "scared" him and he realized that he "needed to dry out [and] sober up."
He added, "I just wasn't a happy person. When I grew up, I was a very happy kid, and I lost that. So I needed to find that."
He did add that he was completely sober for about a year but then "kind of went back to drinking a little bit, but I never really partied."
Noah continued, saying he realized that being totally sober at certain points was "like a superpower." He added, "You sleep better. You're more focused. You're more accountable. You hold yourself far more accountable if you have to prepare for something. It's not like you're hungover, and you're tired, and you can't really remember your lines because you're hungover."
"You got to really confront things, too, if you're not just drinking. If you're drinking, you don't really have to care about things. It's a good way to numb yourself or self-medicate. So you've got to confront things, and then you have to find healthier ways to deal with those things," he told Chicks in the Office.
Noah said regularly working out has been a good outlet that has helped him. He told the podcast, "If I'm in those phases, like right now, I'm in one of those phases where I'm just not really doing anything; you've just got to work out. Work out and just connect with yourself, and try to take care of yourself as best as you can 'cause life's trippy."
Both Ria and Fran commended Noah for realizing that he needed to get sober and look at his use of drugs. He told them, "You've got to want to. You've got to be in a place where you truly have to decide. That's why sobriety and addiction they're such tough things."
Noah concluded, saying, "Unless the person of interest wants it for themselves, it's very hard to make someone do it. And I think what led me to it was I just...I was lucky enough to ask the question, 'Why was I so happy when I was 11 or 12? And what changes have I made since then that have led me to be so unhappy? What was I doing? What was my daily life like at that age?'"
He added, "And I just went, Okay, I'm going to replicate that. And yeah, it helped. It helped substantially."
A clip of Noah talking about his sobriety on Chicks in the Office has already racked up almost 2 million views on TikTok, with the top comment reading: "Love that so many celebrities are talking about sobriety it's beautiful."
Another top comment read, "Wow I had no idea. So proud of you noah!" And someone else chimed in, writing, "Damn, he's incredibly inspiring, being that young and making that decision."
Several users also shared their own sobriety journeys in the comments. One person wrote, "This is beyond relatable. Almost 8 months sober and I cannot stress enough how unhappy I was covering my sorrows with alcohol or smoking."
And another added, "I'm not going sober but I just RARELY drink. Like maybe one drink in 4 months and I am so much happier without it."
You can listen to Noah's entire interview on Chicks in the Office here. Or you can watch the full interview here.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, you can call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) and find more resources here.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.
