"I Was Doing A Lot Of Drugs": Noah Centineo Opened Up Getting Sober For A Year During The Height Of "To All The Boys"

This post contains mentions of substance abuse.

When To All the Boys I Loved Before hit Netflix in the summer of 2018, the stars Lana Condor and Noah Centineo were virtually catapulted to household names overnight.

To All the Boys movies marked some of their earliest major roles. Lana had previously only appeared in X-Men: Apocalypse, while Noah had guest-starred on several TV shows and starred on The Fosters.

For Noah, landing the role of Peter Kavinsky was the culmination of years of hard work, as he had started auditioning in Hollywood when he was around 8 years old.

Now, looking back on his time in the To All the Boys series, Noah is opening up about how it also marked a period of personal growth for him as well, namely a period in his life when he realized he needed to get sober.

While promoting Season 2 of his Netflix series, The Recruit, Noah swung by the Chicks in the Office podcast to discuss playing an action hero, how his life completely changed after To All the Boys, and his relationship with sobriety.

"By the time I did To All the Boys, I had not been through my, like, rage phase. I got sober when I was 21 from everything for about a year. And that was kind of that whole To All the Boys phase," Noah told Chicks in the Office hosts Ria Ciuffo and Fran Mariano.

Speaking about this time in his life, Noah said, "I was so unhappy. I was able to pay my bills for the first time. I was like completely financially stable and secure. I was working regularly. And I was doing a lot of drugs. I wasn't doing anything crazy, but I was just doing drugs a lot and drinking all the time. Every day. And I was young. I was 20 years old. And I had been doing that for a couple of years."

He continued, saying, "So, I had a career that I was proud of. I was making enough money to pay my rent and put a little bit away. And, so, you would think I should be super stoked and super happy, and I just wasn't."

Noah said what ultimately led him to realize he needed to get sober from drugs was that one day, the world "just looked different," and it felt like "something had kind of broken a little bit." He said it "scared" him and he realized that he "needed to dry out [and] sober up."

He did add that he was completely sober for about a year but then "kind of went back to drinking a little bit, but I never really partied."

Noah continued, saying, he realized that being totally sober at certain points was "like a superpower." He added, "You sleep better. You're more focused. You're more accountable. You hold yourself far more accountable if you have to prepare for something. It's not like you're hungover, and you're tired, and you can't really remember your lines because you're hungover."

"You got to really confront things, too, if you're not just drinking. If you're drinking, you don't really have to care about things. It's a good way to numb yourself or self-medicate. So you've got to confront things, and then you have to find healthier ways to deal with those things," he told Chicks in the Office.

Both Ria and Fran commended Noah for realizing that he needed to get sober and look at his use of drugs. He told them, "You've got to want to. You've got to be in a place where you truly have to decide. That's why sobriety and addiction they're such tough things."

Noah concluded, saying, "Unless the person of interest wants it for themselves, it's very hard to make someone do it. And I think what led me to it was I just I was lucky enough to ask the question, 'Why was I so happy when I was 11 or 12? And what changes have I made since then that have led me to be so unhappy? What was I doing? What was my daily life like at that age?'"

A clip for Noah talking about his sobriety on Chicks in the Office has already racked up almost two million views on TikTok, with the top comment reading: "Love that so many celebrities are talking about sobriety it's beautiful."

You can listen to Noah's entire interview on Chicks in the Office here. Or you can watch the full interview here.

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, you can call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) and find more resources here.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.