Stopped drinking by first acknowledging I had a problem: Pooja Bhatt

Pooja Bhatt, who quit drinking on Christmas last year, says that a person can quit drinking by first acknowledging that there is a drinking problem.

Present at Closeted conversations... Let’s start Talking Again, a conference here for woman change-makers, a part of Shift Series, she spoke about her alcohol problem and how she got over it. “I stopped drinking by first acknowledging that I had a drinking problem. Because you are a woman and you live in a society where they are always taught or forced to brush things under the carpet. We tend to bury this shameful habit that we have of covering it up and say, ‘Oh, we don’t have a problem, it is somebody else’s and I am not that drunk’,” said Pooja.

The actor-filmmaker, who made her acting debut with the film Daddy, made under the direction of her father and filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, which acknowledges a father’s drinking issues with the daughter helping him out, says it has been “90 days of my sobriety”.

The 45-year-old also shared that sometimes she also had to and has to deal with the pressure of people asking: “Hey, you are not drinking? You must have a drink”.

“It is not alcohol you are addicted to, it’s the absence of absence. All of us somewhere are lonely. Some expect a man to find the answer while some find it easily in the bottle of alcohol. It seems very gratifying, it pulls you and before you know it, you are down the rabbit hole and it is difficult to come back,” said Pooja, who is working on Jism 3.