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Suits L.A. actor Stephen Amell says he loves being a family man more than he could ever love “any mind-altering substance.”

“I don’t like having a drink. That’s part of the problem,” the father of Maverick, 11, and Bowen, 2, said. “… [I] do my best to never touch any hard liquor anymore” and “make an effort never to really drink around my kids.”

The CODE 8 actor now has zero regrets about drinking responsibly.

“I love nothing more right now than getting a good night’s sleep,” he said on an episode of Michael Rosenbaum’s podcast Inside of You. “Waking up at 6 o’clock in the morning for an hour by myself before I make my kids breakfast, take my daughter to school. I did school drop-off this morning. I love it way more than I could ever love any mind-altering substance.”

From Addicted to Sober

Amell used to drink often, which spiked his anxiety. Eventually, he stopped drinking for long periods.

“I have an addictive personality. I have a history of alcoholism in my family. So it’s a slippery slope. I’d rather just not get on the slope,” he said.

“I think that it definitely could have [gone] in that direction if I didn’t sort myself out. But you lose the ability — if you are constantly dealing with a hangover — to feel genuine happiness,” he explained. “You miss it emotionally, you’re not present and you’re not available in the way that you should be as a partner, as a friend or as a father. It’s just dulling you.”

He recalled a time when he “had too many drinks” before he boarded a plane with his wife. He started to shout at her after they boarded, but his wife remained calm.

“My wife said one thing the entire time, which was, ‘If you don’t lower your voice, they’re going to ask you to get off the plane,’” and she was right.

But he soon realised he needed to quit, and got on the right track.

Amell admits he got “a little bit of the sweats” when he started to abstain and feels “significantly better.” His relationship with his wife is also “considerably better”, and they have “more fun together.”

“I eat better. I look better. I act better,” he said.

Thanks Be to God

Movieguide® reported on another actor, Josh Brolin’s, happiness with his decision to remain sober:

Actor Josh Brolin, best known for his roles in AVENGERS: ENDGAME and DUNE, recently celebrated eight years of sobriety and thanked God.

“Sobriety is finally loving without every thought being about how it affects only you,” Brolin wrote in a forthcoming post to his Instagram. “Sobriety is a moment of being able to love and be consumed by the glee it brings someone else. Sobriety is knowing the difference between selfishness and integrity. Sobriety is knowing that God is in everything and that it is made up of every color (and mixture of color) that exists…”

“Sobriety is about living better than your remembrance of what your greatest drunk ever was — an everyday malleability into gratitude for what is. None of this is deserved. All of it is perception. Thank you God, family, and friends for the most punk rock sobriety imaginable,” he concluded.

 

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Republished with thanks to Movie Guide.