Alec Baldwin discusses 39-year sobriety: ‘Cocaine was like coffee’

NEW YORK — Alec Baldwin, currently awaiting trial for involuntary manslaughter, is opening up about four decades of sobriety.

The Emmy winner, 66, told the “Our Way with Paul Anka and Skip Bronson” podcast about contending with substance abuse in the early 1980s, when asked if he still drinks.

“I don’t discuss this a lot. … I’m 39 years sober. I got sober Feb. 23, 1985,” said the “30 Rock” alum and native New Yorker. “I had a white-hot problem every day for two years. I think I snorted a line of cocaine from here to Saturn. … Then we came home. We took it back home. I mean, cocaine was like coffee back then. Everybody was doing it all day long.”

Baldwin noted his “drinking increased” when he gave up drugs, “which they tell you is going to happen.”

“And that did happen. I just started drinking,” he said, noting he later quit drinking cold turkey. “I don’t miss drugs at all, but I do miss drinking. I like to drink.”

Baldwin noted that he does “try to meditate,” but doing so with seven young children, whom he shares with his second wife, Hilaria Baldwin, is “a real pain in the a–, man.”

Baldwin is also the father of 28-year-old Ireland Baldwin, from his first marriage to Kim Basinger.

His remarks come as Baldwin awaits his July trial for firing a live round that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the New Mexico set of “Rust” in October 2021. The shooting also wounded director Joel Souza.

In responding to Baldwin’s lawyers’ motion to drop the charges against him, special prosecutors Kari T. Morrissey and Jason J. Lewis last month accused him of having displayed a “complete lack of concern for the safety of those around him” on set. Baldwin has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty in January.

Those remarks were made just days before “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was responsible for supervising weapons on the set, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. She received the maximum sentence of 18 months behind bars.