Lucy Hale got real while discussing her journey to sobriety, which she called "incredibly self-destructive." During her appearance on the podcast The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, the Pretty Little Liars actress started tearing up and told the show's host that she cries "all the time" when talking about the experience.
"I just love where I landed in my life and it’s been a really powerful and painful, insightful, joyous, horrible journey," Hale said in the episode. “I was a textbook binge drinker. Blackout. I wouldn’t remember what I did or what I said.” She added that she's been "working on getting sober since [she] was 20,” since she first had alcohol at just 14 years old.
The 33-year-old said she used to drink to "quiet [her] mind" and felt like her "real" self when she was drunk but now understands that idea to be "bulls—t." After years of trying to get sober for other people in her life, her career, or "vain reasons," she finally made the decision for herself on January 2nd, 2022 and it stuck. “I said, ‘I deserve more out of this life. I have to try it a different way,'” she said, and added that she experienced “dozens” of “emotional rock bottoms … at the depths of hell.”
Just last week, Hale took to Instagram to celebrate her one-year anniversary of sobriety. "This is a post about self-love and about the greatest thing I’ve ever done,” she wrote on Valentine's Day. “I felt compelled tonight to let anyone who is struggling know that you are not alone and you are loved.”