Ben Affleck Says He Wishes His Sobriety Was ‘Anonymous’

Ben Affleck is opening up about his sobriety ― and why he almost wishes fewer people knew about it.

In one of the actor’s most recent movies, “The Way Back,” he plays a recovering addict.

While Affleck has spoken about addiction openly in the past, he told GQ Magazine in a recent interview that he “maybe underestimated the degree to which” his alcoholism or recovery would become a talking point going forward.

“I didn’t have any ambitions to be the national spokesman for recovering alcoholics,” he said in the cover story, published on Tuesday.

“And not because I have any shame with it or anything,” Affleck added. “I just find that, I’ve been sober for more than five years, it’s just not something that is at the forefront of my mind. It’s not the central preoccupation of my life. But at the time, it was something that I was definitely wrestling with and thinking about.”

The Oscar winner said that if he “could have,” he “would’ve kept the fact that I’m sober anonymous.”

“I think it works better that way. And I didn’t ask for that to become something people knew about,” he said.

“But I can’t complain about it either. I understood doing this job and doing this life, if something happened like that, people were going to know about it, and they did,” Affleck explained. “And I have arrived at a place where I think of that experience as part of my life in authentically grateful ways, whereas I didn’t think such a thing was possible before. So that sort of is what it is.”

Affleck released a public statement in 2018, after his third stint in rehab, in which he said that “battling any addiction is a lifelong and difficult struggle.”

“Because of that, one is never really in or out of treatment. It is a full-time commitment,” he wrote at the time.

In 2021, the “Argo” star told The Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast he’d “been sober for a while now” and that he feels “as healthy and good as I’ve ever felt.”