Bollywood actress-filmmaker Pooja Bhatt quit drinking last Christmas.
Present at Closeted conversations... Let’s start Talking Again, a conference in New Delhi for woman change-makers, a part of Shift Series, she spoke about her alcohol addiction 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 and say, ‘Oh, we don’t have a problem, it is somebody else’s and I am not that drunk’,” Bhatt said on Thursday.
Bhatt had made her acting debut with her father Mahesh Bhatt’s film Daddy in 1990, which sees an alcoholic father and his daughter helping him out out of it.
The 45-year-old, who has been sober for 90 days now, also shared that sometimes she too 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 Bhatt, who is working on Jism 3.
The Shift Series programme also had Chandro Tomar, also known as Revolver Dadi, Nithya Shanti (happiness coach), Sundeep Rao (comedian) and Namrata Joshipura (fashion designer) at the event.
