Zach Braff is opening up about his past struggles with binge drinking amid a battle with anxiety and depression.
“I definitely have had binge drinking problems in my life,” Braff, 50, said while appearing on the Monday, March 16, episode of Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast. “My problem with alcohol was never, ‘Oh, I want to drink at noon.’ And so, I rationalized that just drinking a f*** ton on a Saturday night until you blacked out wasn’t an alcohol problem.”
Braff said he struggled with anxiety, depression, severe panic attacks and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which amplified his desire to drink.
“I think I had some embarrassing experiences where I was just drinking too much. They accumulated,” the Scrubs star explained, revealing that he turned to athlete Rich Roll’s podcast for help.
“He had had a guy on his podcast … The program was called ‘One Year No Beer,’ and it was an English guy who was just in the business world and his whole career was drinking,” Braff continued. “It was pints. Every day, he had to go for pints at lunch, and pints after, and he did blow, and I believe, all sorts of things. And his episode of Rich Roll really spoke to me, not because I had that kind of relationship with alcohol, but because he said, ‘Go on this journey and see what your life is like without it.’”
Braff said he went “a month” without alcohol, followed by another month, at which point he noticed a change in his mental health.
“Everything he was saying started to come to fruition that I was feeling better overall, less depression,” he shared. “Part of his whole thing is, you are taking an antidepressant [medication] and pounding [alcohol, which is a depressant] at the same time. … And he said, ‘If you drink a couple of times a week, the alcohol never fully leaves your system. So you always have this low-grade chemical in your body, a depressant.’ And so, I started to feel everything that he was talking about.”
Braff said that once he “flushed the depressant out of [his] body,” he started feeling “lighter.”
“I was having more energy. I was feeling happier,” he added. “I ended up doing 13 months, never touching booze and totally reset my relationship to it.”
Braff told listeners, “So if you’re listening to this and you’re taking an antidepressant and you’re drinking several times a week, I’m here to tell you … You should watch this podcast. I’m telling you, it really made me want to try.”
The A Good Person director also emphasized that he did not give up alcohol completely, as he still drinks “socially.” However, he doesn’t “get drunk” anymore.
“Also, no more booze. I don’t do spirits at all. I’ll sip wine at dinner. I’ll have a mimosa at brunch. I don’t get hammered anymore because I just didn’t like myself like that,” he added. “But my point is … it is an interesting experiment to just see what you feel like [after] a month and then two months.”
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).
