Brad Pitt is drinking again after seven years sober – because apparently that was a good idea to him

Brad Pitt has spent the better part of a decade selling one very particular story about himself: he screwed up, his marriage imploded, he stopped drinking, went to a 12-step program and emerged as a supposedly wiser, healthier version of Brad Pitt.

Well, scratch one rather significant part of that redemption arc.

Pitt, 62, has now openly admitted that he is drinking alcohol again after seven years of sobriety.

In a new Esquire interview, Pitt casually revealed that he had gone “back off the wagon”, explaining that he now drinks in what he considers a more restrained way. Apparently he can have a few drinks, just not too many, because, in his words, he has to be “professional about it”.

That is certainly one way of putting it.

This is a man who didn’t originally stop drinking because he wanted better skin or thought Dry January sounded fun. Alcohol was tangled up with one of the darkest and most consequential periods of his life, the collapse of his marriage to Angelina Jolie and the subsequent destruction of his relationship with much of his family.

So why exactly has Brad decided that drinking again is something worth experimenting with?

Brad Pitt spent years making sobriety part of his redemption story

Pitt stopped drinking following his 2016 separation from Jolie and subsequently spent roughly a year and a half attending a 12-step program. He later spoke publicly about how valuable those meetings had been, describing the experience of sitting with other men and talking openly about their problems as liberating.

This was not some secret struggle Hollywood discovered years later. Brad himself repeatedly made sobriety part of the Brad Pitt comeback narrative.

In 2017, he acknowledged that his drinking had become excessive. Years later, he publicly thanked Bradley Cooper for helping him get sober, saying that every day had been happier since.

Even as recently as 2025, Pitt was still talking publicly about his experience with recovery and the importance of the 12-step group he joined after his marriage collapsed.

And now?

Apparently wine is back on the menu.

Pitt told Esquire he had already become “overconfident” about his ability to drink on a couple of occasions before realising larger quantities were not good for him. He nevertheless believes he can now have a few drinks as long as he keeps himself under control.

Maybe he can.

But when someone has previously decided complete sobriety was necessary, spent years publicly crediting it with changing his life and now admits he has already tested those limits a little too enthusiastically, people are understandably going to raise an eyebrow.

And then came Taylor Swift’s wedding

The timing makes the story even more interesting.

Pitt attended Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s enormous Madison Square Garden wedding on July 3, one of the most celebrity-packed events of the year. He was there with his girlfriend of almost four years, Ines de Ramon, 33.

Reports from the wedding subsequently claimed Pitt was drinking at the reception, weeks before he publicly confirmed that his sobriety had ended.

The wedding report about his drinking remains an account from unnamed attendees rather than something independently documented on video, so there is a difference between “guests said they saw him drinking” and pretending we have footage of Brad doing tequila shots from Paul McCartney’s shoe.

But Pitt’s own admission now removes the bigger mystery.

He drinks again.

And judging by his explanation to Esquire, this hasn’t been a one-off celebratory glass of champagne. He made a conscious decision to reintroduce alcohol into his life and has apparently been doing so long enough to discover that there are quantities he still cannot handle comfortably.

Which brings us back to the fairly obvious question: why?

Of all the things Brad could reintroduce into his life, alcohol?

Pitt’s history with alcohol cannot be separated completely from what happened to his family.

Jolie filed for divorce in September 2016, days after the now-infamous private-plane incident involving Pitt, Jolie and their children. Jolie later made serious allegations about Pitt’s behaviour during that flight. Authorities investigated the incident and Pitt was not criminally charged. Pitt subsequently acknowledged that his drinking had become a problem and stopped drinking following the separation.

So whatever anyone thinks of the competing narratives surrounding Brad and Angelina, Brad himself decided alcohol needed to go.

That matters.

Because it is very different from somebody who has never had an acknowledged drinking problem deciding to order a pinot noir with dinner.

And Pitt’s family situation is hardly so wonderfully repaired that reintroducing alcohol seems inconsequential.

This cannot possibly help with his children

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s children have sent some extraordinarily clear public signals over the past few years.

Shiloh legally removed “Pitt” from her surname in 2024. More recently, Maddox, Zahara and Vivienne have also filed to remove Pitt from their legal names, while other children have publicly used versions of their names without his surname.

Whatever is happening privately between Pitt and his children, this is not a family screaming everything is healed and Dad is back!

Reports continue to describe his relationships with several of the children as strained or extremely limited. Pitt himself has now acknowledged that “family stuff” contributed to an extraordinarily painful period of his life.

And that is what makes the alcohol admission so baffling.

We do not know what his children think about him drinking again, and nobody should pretend we do.

But if sobriety became symbolic of Pitt recognising that his previous behaviour needed to change, returning to alcohol seems unlikely to reassure children who already appear to have put considerable distance between themselves and their father.

Getting your relationship with your children back on track would presumably involve demonstrating stability, accountability and consistency.

“Dad has decided he can drink again now” does not exactly sound like the most useful addition to that plan.

Meanwhile, Brad and Ines suddenly went very public

Then there is the slightly strange Ines de Ramon subplot.

Pitt and de Ramon have been linked since late 2022. They have attended public events together before, including the Venice Film Festival, but their relationship had remained comparatively private on social media.

Then Taylor Swift got married and suddenly Brad and Ines were ready for their close-up.

Their hairstylist Laurie Zanoletti photographed them together before the ceremony in coordinated black eveningwear. Their makeup artist also shared behind-the-scenes material and de Ramon reposted one of the couple photographs to her Instagram Story with a heart and Swift’s Lover.

This wasn’t paparazzi catching them accidentally holding hands outside a restaurant.

These were polished, posed, beautifully lit photographs produced by the couple’s own glam orbit.

And in one of those supposedly romantic photographs, de Ramon’s expression could rather easily be read as more wince than weak-at-the-knees adoration while Pitt has his hand around her waist.

Maybe it was simply an unfortunate fraction of a second.

But if you’re going to orchestrate a glamorous Instagram debut after nearly four years together, perhaps choose the photograph where your girlfriend doesn’t look like she’s counting backwards from ten.

Were the Brad and Ines wedding pictures a publicity exercise?

There is another reason those photographs deserve scrutiny.

Celebrity reporter Rob Shuter subsequently claimed that Pitt and de Ramon personally approved the pictures before they appeared online and knew they would attract enormous attention. That is an source claim rather than something Pitt or de Ramon has publicly confirmed which is what celebrities do. They don’t normally publicly comment.

So it doesn’t take to be Sherlock Holmes to knows the photographs were curated.

They were taken by their hairstylist before the wedding. They showed off their clothes, grooming and relationship. They were posted publicly. Ines then deliberately reshared the photos on her Instagram.

We don’t know if that means their relationship is fake. It does mean the publicity was real.

Pitt and de Ramon have spent years being relatively restrained about their romance and suddenly chose the biggest celebrity wedding of the decade to make their first social-media appearance together.

Pure coincidence?

Sure.

And Kris Jenner hates publicity.

So where exactly was Ines when Brad left?

Here is where the wedding-night story gets considerably less tidy.

Pitt was photographed leaving Madison Square Garden in an SUV after the reception. Published reports identified musician Beck among the people travelling with him.

But the widely circulated paparazzi departure photograph of Brad Pitt with Beck in the back of a car does not visibly show de Ramon.

Several entertainment reports subsequently described Pitt and de Ramon as leaving in a private SUV together or leaving alongside Beck. TMZ, for example, reported that the couple were seen exiting Madison Square Garden in a private SUV.

But the famous departure shot itself certainly does not prove it.

In fact, if de Ramon really is inside that vehicle, she has achieved something almost impossible at a celebrity wedding surrounded by paparazzi: complete invisibility.

We can’t see her in the car, so she must have gone elsewhere without her partner. That in itself is curious and makes it appear that their relationship might not be all that it seems.

The polished couple photos and the messy reality afterwards

And that is what makes the sequence rather delicious from a gossip perspective.

Before the party: immaculate Brad and Ines photographs, matching black outfits, hands around waists, Lover playing on Instagram and their relationship suddenly going social-media official. But there is this very weird photo where Ines appears to be wincing and trying to get away from Brad. All so suss.

After the party: Brad photographed leaving, Ines nowhere visible in the best-known car shot and reports emerging that Hollywood’s famously sober leading man had been drinking inside.

Then, barely a month later, Pitt publicly announces that he isn’t sober at all anymore.

Quite the PR sandwich.

They have since been seen together publicly and several outlets continue to describe them as a committed couple. But that could just be PR. She has been known to date men who are in the closet, like Paul Wesley, allegedly.

So it does make those extremely polished wedding photographs look less like a spontaneous romantic moment and more like exactly what they were: carefully produced celebrity imagery showing the version of the evening they wanted everyone to see.

When you look at the candid street style photos of Pitt and Ines de Ramon, such as their high-profile walks through New York City or Italy, the energy shifts into something that feels heavily produced. Critics who believe the relationship is a set up, point out that these photos rarely look truly accidental. Instead, they closely resemble stylised, professional “paparazzi walks”, which is a well-known Hollywood PR tactic where a celebrity tips off photographers to capture a perfectly staged, highly flattering “casual” moment. The lack of candid eye contact between them, combined with the fact that they always look flawlessly styled and directed straight ahead, makes the intimacy feel more performed than lived-in. It very much feels this is a fake relationship between them, but why? That’s the question isn’t it? Brad Pitt could get any woman (pretty much) but he chose Ines. One has to wonder what is being hidden here? And why?

Brad Pitt says he has it under control

Ultimately, Pitt is a 62-year-old man and can make his own decisions.

He says he can now drink a few glasses without returning to his old patterns. He says he understands that larger quantities do not work for him. He says he has to approach alcohol “professionally”.

Perhaps that works indefinitely.

But Pitt has also spent years explaining that giving up alcohol was a major part of rebuilding himself after his life spectacularly detonated in 2016.

His marriage ended.

His relationship with his children deteriorated.

Several of those children have now actively sought to remove his name from theirs.

And somewhere along the way, Brad Pitt apparently looked at one of the few parts of that story that seemed unequivocally positive – seven years without alcohol – and decided that was the bit he could afford to change.

He may call it drinking in moderation.

He may call it being professional.

Brad himself supplied the much simpler description:

He got back off the wagon.

And that was not a good decision.

He’s clearly an alcoholic with addiction problems and needs more therapy. Will he get it? Unlikely. Remember, Jennifer Aniston once said he had a “sensitivity chip missing”. That infers he doesn’t self reflect. He actually once said he never looks back. Again, another statement that doesn’t bode well for him. Is a serious relapse in his future. Probably.