Featured Image Credit: Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images, Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Topics: Anne Hathaway, Celebrity, Health, Mental Health
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: Anne Hathaway, Celebrity, Health, Mental Health
Warning: This article contains discussion of alcoholism which some readers may find distressing.
Anne Hathaway has opened up about being five years sober in celebration of the 'milestone'.
The icon of many our favorite childhood movies and highly anticipated upcoming release The Idea of You has been sober for over five years and has spoken out why that's more of a 'milestone' to her than other aspects of life.
In an interview with the New York Times, Hathaway reflected on surpassing the age of 40 and how she doesn't really 'take it that seriously' being at the so-called 'middle age' of life when she considers 'so many other things' as bigger 'milestones'.
For example, her years of not drinking alcohol.
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The 41-year-old opened up: "I don’t normally talk about it, but I am over five years sober. That feels like a milestone to me.
"Forty feels like a gift. The fact of the matter is I hesitate at calling things 'middle age' simply because I can be a semantic stickler and I could get hit by a car later today.
"We don’t know if this is middle age. We don’t know anything."
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Hathaway continued by explaining how she used to be a 'chronically stressed young woman'.
She reflected she 'didn't know how to breathe yet' which was 'really complicated' and if putting it 'simp[ly]' she was stressed about 'literally everything'.
"I was very in my head about a lot of things," Hathaway added, noting there 'was a lot of somatic stress there' and she 'probably' used drinking as a way of dealing with it at the time.
However, one day the actor came to the realisation she was 'taking this for granted' and 'taking [her] life for granted'.
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So, at the time, she told herself: "Something could fall through the sky and that would be lights out."
And for the moments where the 'old instincts' start 'rising' again? Well, Hathaway tells herself: "You are not going to die stressed."
The actor has previously opened up about her journey with alcohol, revealing when she first decided to give it up.
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In an interview with Vanity Fair earlier this month, Hathaway said she knew 'deep down' alcohol 'wasn't for [her]'.
She added: "And it just felt so extreme to have to say, ‘But none?’ But none. If you’re allergic to something or have an anaphylactic reaction to something, you don’t argue with it. So I stopped arguing with it."
The actor explained she made 'a lot of [her] lifestyle choices in service of supporting mental health' and 'stopped participating in things' she knew to be 'draining' or 'cause spirals'.
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Hathaway resolved: "It’s a path everybody has to walk for themselves. My personal experience with it is that everything is better. For me, it was wallowing fuel. And I don’t like to wallow.
"The thing that I have faith in is that everybody else is going to have one or two drinks, and by the time everybody gets to two drinks, you’ll feel like you’ve had two drinks – but without the hangover."
If you've been affected by addiction and want to speak to someone in confidence, you can call American Addiction Centers on (888) 324-0595, available 24/7, or contact them through their website.