In a new cover story for Esquire magazine, Brad Pitt has landed himself in the middle of a longstanding debate in alcohol abuse treatment circles by revealing that he’s no longer sober.

The 62-year-old actor also suggested to writer Ryan D’Agostino that he can manage his drinking — after being very public in the past about it becoming a serious problem in his life. The Oscar winner, who is promoting two new films this fall, revealed that he “was sober for seven years” but that he’s “back off the wagon” and is drinking “in a more restrained manner.”

With that, social media has lit up with people debating whether or not Pitt, who probably would have declared himself to be an alcoholic in 12-step meetings, can ever safely start drinking again.

Pitt first began to open up somewhat about his substance abuse problems and recovery journey following his acrimonious 2016 split from Angelina Jolie. His ex-wife filed for divorce after she accused him in court documents of drinking too much on a private plane ride back from Europe in September 2016, during which he allegedly abused her and their six children, emotionally and physically.

US actress Angelina Jolie (C) and children (fromL) Pax, Shiloh, Vivienne, Zahara and Knox arrive for the world premiere of Disney's "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil" at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on September 30, 2019. (Photo by VALERIE MACON / AFP) / 

Pitt has reportedly become estranged from his children, now 18 to 24, and four have taken legal steps to drop his last name from their own. Sources close to Jolie recently hit back at Pitt’s ongoing claims that she worked to alienate the children from their father, instead saying, “If people knew the whole truth, they would have more sympathy for the children and respect them.”

Pitt first revealed in a 2017 GQ interview that he had been “boozing too much” and “it became a problem.” He told the New York Times in 2019 that he had joined a 12-step community and, at a 2020 awards gala, thanked his friend Bradley Cooper in 2020 for helping him get sober.

As recently as last year, the “F1” star talked to actor and podcaster Dax Shepard about the benefits of attending an Alcoholic Anonymous men’s group. That’s where the two men met, with Pitt saying, “It was when I was first getting sober. I just thought it was just incredible. Men sharing their experiences, their foibles, their missteps, their wants, their aches, and a lot of humor with it. I thought it was a really special experience.”

But at some point, as Pitt revealed to Esquire, he began to drink again. The issue came up when Pitt, hosting D’Agostino at his home in Los Angeles, offered D’Agostino some wine.

D’Agostino asked if the wine is something he just had available for guests, since the “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” star was talking to Shepard last year about his sobriety. But Pitt explained how he’s off the wagon but no longer drinks in “big quantities.”

“I got overconfident a couple times, went, Yep, nope, not good for me,” he said. He also said he can have a glass of wine. “Yeah. Well . . . I can have a few,” he said. “But I can’t have a lot. I have to be professional about it.”

In the same interview though, Pitt, a self-admitted “congenital optimist” described experiencing some dark points in his life, possibly around the time of his breakup with Jolie or during his ongoing estrangement from his children. Pitt said he was “never suicidal” but said he understands why someone, in a desperate state, might see suicide as a momentary “relief from the pain.”

When D’Agostino asked if those feelings were associated with the “kid stuff,” the star of the upcoming “Heart of the Beast” and “The Adventures of Cliff Booth” didn’t want to get into any specifics. He said, more generally, the feelings came from “family stuff. We could leave it at that.” In the interview, Pitt also spoke about dealing with grief from his mother’s death last year.

Over on Reddit and other online forums, Pitt’s return to drinking has stirred controversy, especially from people who are in recovery themselves or who grew up with loved ones who abused alcohol.

“Alcoholics can’t drink because we can’t control our drinking,” one person said on Reddit. “He seems to think he’s an exception, and he just needs to stop drinking for good. His personal life is sure an example of why alcohol is just not OK for some people.”

“I don’t know if he’s an alcoholic or not but we alcoholics can never drink again,” added someone commenting on People magazine’s website. “We will very quickly go back to the bottom if we start again. There’s no long progression like was from that first long ago; things very quickly go south. It’s really insidious that way.”

Alcoholics Anonymous, a prominent longtime voice in the treatment community, upholds the view that abstinence is the only way people can ever properly deal with alcoholism — or what’s now referred to as an alcohol use disorder (AUD).

“Once the individual has crossed the borderline from heavy drinking to irresponsible alcoholic drinking, there seems to be no retreat,” the 91-year-old organization said on its website. “After quitting for a period, the alcoholic may feel it is safe to try a few beers or a few glasses of wine. … But it is not too long before the alcoholic is back in the old pattern of too-heavy drinking — in spite of all efforts to set limits for only moderate, social drinking.”

Based on A.A. experience, the organization also said: “If you are an alcoholic, you will never be able to control your drinking for any length of time. That leaves two paths open: to let your drinking become worse and worse with all the damaging results that follow, or to quit completely and to develop a new pattern of sober, constructive living.”

But the “harm reduction” approach also is gaining acceptance in the treatment world, including at the national level, according to a 2023 article published on the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism website. Among other things, harm reduction recognizes that “few” people with alcohol use disorders “achieve continuous abstinence” after undergoing treatment. That is, relapse is common and part of the recovery process — which A.A. also recognizes. And, realistically, many people don’t want to abstain and won’t seek treatment if that’s the only way they can get any help, the article said.

Helping people find ways to reduce alcohol consumption “can be effective for mitigating the harms associated with alcohol misuse for many individuals,” the article said. While abstinence “is the safest course for certain subgroups,” data shows that non-abstinence-based strategies “have become an important part of the discussion around AUD treatment and the recovery process,” the article also said.

Katie Witkiewitz, a professor of psychology and the director of the Center on Alcohol, Substance Use, and Addictions at the University of New Mexico, as well as a member of the NIAAA Advisory Council, was quoted as saying that expanding the scope of treatment and research “to include non-abstinent drinking reductions as a treatment … could substantially lessen the public health burden of (alcohol use disorders).”

“An expanding body of research demonstrates that reductions in drinking lead to reductions in risk and has established that individuals can reduce their drinking and/or their experience of harm associated with alcohol use without achieving abstinence,” she said.