‘I’m actually gonna ruin my life’: why Bradley Cooper quit alcohol

Sometimes, it takes someone you deeply care about calling you “a real a**hole” to realize you need to change.

That was the case with Bradley Cooper, who is now acknowledged to be one of the nicest (and most talented) guys in Hollywood.

It wasn’t always that way.

Fueled by addictions to alcohol and cocaine and hampered by a crushing lack of self-esteem, Cooper spent years in the early 2000s offending the people around him.

I finally got around to listening to Cooper’s episode on the Smartless podcast this week, and it provides a window into Cooper’s struggles with drugs and alcohol and how he finally got things turned around.

Tough talk

In it, Cooper walks the listener through a tough conversation he had with comedian and actor Will Arnett that wound up being Cooper’s catalyst for change.

Cooper actually became emotional while retelling the story.

Arnett, who must be a great guy because he’s a fellow Canadian (*wink*), has a bunch of hyper-famous friends — including a handful who credit him with helping them get and stay off the booze.

In 2004, Cooper was trying to overcompensate for his own lack of self-esteem by embracing “mean humour,” which was popular at the time.

He explained: “Coming up in 1999–2000, the comedians who were popular, mean humour was the thing. Being an insecure person — I remember there was a good year where I just tried to access mean humour out of insecurity.”

Arnett, who is an expert at walking the line of making fun of someone but doing it in a charming and hilarious way, confronted Cooper after a particularly awkward night at dinner with some friends.

Cooper tells the story:

“I’ll never forget it because Will, who can be mean, but there’s no ill will, it’s just if you know each other and you feel safe the way we do. But I didn’t know Will that well then.

“And he says ‘hey man, do you remember we had dinner the other night? How did you think that went?’

“And I remember being at the dinner thinking I was so funny and I thought these two guys who were my heroes thought that I was so funny.

“I was like ‘oh, I thought it was great, I thought I was killing.’

And Will Arnett turns to me and goes, “you were a real a**hole, man. You were a real a**hole.”

And I was like “what?!”

He was like, ‘yeah, and by the way, have your dogs gone out to the bathroom?” and I was like ‘nah, what time is it?’ It’s 4 o’clock.

“I think they have to go to the bathroom, they’re standing by the door.”

And that was like the first time I ever realized I had a problem with drugs and alcohol. It was Will saying that to me, and I’ll just never forget it.

Cooper says that, at the time, he didn’t even think he could offend anyone because he considered his opinions, and himself, to be completely worthless.

Even after all his success, after becoming world famous via the Hangover movies, after a bunch of Oscar nominations, Cooper admits it was only recently — in his mid-40s and with the help of a therapist — that he actually started feeling OK about himself.

Josh Jensen from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why we drink

Everyone has their own reason, or mix of reasons, for abusing drugs and alcohol.

For Cooper, it was a deep-seated lack of self-esteem.

But alcohol masquerades as the solution to problems that it actually creates and, at some point, the supposed positives of drinking and drugs start to be outweighed by the obvious negatives.

Rather than looking forward to using them as an escape from the bad feelings you’re having, you start to feel suffocated and limited by them.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter at the height of the Hangover sequels but before he joined Hollywood royalty with his passion project (A Star is Born), Cooper explained that he realized one day he was going to throw everything away if he didn’t get his addictions under control:

“I don’t drink or do drugs at all anymore. Being sober helps a great deal.”

“I was at a party and deliberately bashed my head on the concrete floor — like, ‘Hey, look how tough I am!’ And I came up, and blood dripped down. And then I did it again. I spent the night at St. Vincent’s Hospital with a sock of ice, waiting for them to stitch me up.

“I was so concerned what you thought of me, how I was coming across, how I would survive the day. I always felt like an outsider. I just lived in my head.

“I realized I wasn’t going to live up to my potential, and that scared the hell out of me. I thought, ‘Wow, I’m actually gonna ruin my life; I’m really gonna ruin it.’

“Part of me believed it, and part of me didn’t. But the proof was in the pudding: I’d always gotten up at the crack of dawn, and that was out the window. I remember looking at my life, my apartment, my dogs, and I thought, ‘What’s happening?’”

This quote really speaks to me.

For me, the decision to shake alcohol was the realization that, if I didn’t get it out of my life, I was never going to live up to my potential. I was never going to achieve my entrepreneurial goals outside of my day job, which was deeply important to me.

I was never going to be proud of myself, or even know if I could accomplish anything worthwhile.

I knew I would always have this malaise hanging over me, forever sapping my self-worth.

As both I and Cooper learned, quitting alcohol allows you to become the person you actually are.

In the Smartless interview, co-host Jason Bateman remarked that Cooper took the opposite track of most people in Hollywood. With access to whatever you want and surrounded by sycophants, you become a worse version of yourself.

“What’s great about your level of success is it did the opposite … it has allowed you to be as kind and vulnerable and human as you innately are with no fear of that being misinterpreted.”

Bradley Cooper’s story shows that, even if you’re doing OK in your life and career, alcohol can find a way to latch onto your insecurities.

It will trick you into thinking it’s making things better when, in reality, it’s making everything worse.

But Cooper also shows that, once you escape that cycle, there are incredible experiences and successes waiting for you on the other side.

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