Suits Patrick J. Adams Admits He Needed To Quit Alcohol To Be A Better Father

Patrick J Adams had a very good reason to turn his back on alcohol. At that point in his life, he was living like he was still in his 20s and was far from being a responsible and present parent.

Quitting alcohol helped him battle depression and begin to put his life in order. Here’s the actor’s journey to regaining full control of his life.

Patrick J. Adams Says His Addiction to Alcohol Was Making Him “Miserable”

Adams is more famously known for his role in ‘Suits,‘ which gained a broad new fandom when it launched on Netflix. While he was battling courtroom drama in the series that famously starred Meghan Markle, he was battling being an alcohol addict in real life.

The actor appeared on the Nov. 26 episode of ‘Dinner’s on Me’ to talk about his path to sobriety and the unwanted situations he was in due to his previous relationship with alcohol.

“I wasn’t taking good care of my mental health, and I was drinking too much come the end of seventh season,” Adams, 43, told host Jesse Tyler Feguson. “I was in a zone of living a pretty unexamined life, was pretty miserable … was, I would say, pretty depressed.”

“I didn’t have the tools to deal with that depression beyond just spending money and drinking too much, you know, and not really knowing how to talk about it or in therapy sort of, but not really doing it,” Adams shared. “You know what I mean? Like, there are all these things that I knew I needed to probably be doing and I wasn’t doing.”

He further described how he was “still trying to live my life as a 25-year-old and doing my patterns of, like, how I would numb myself and take care of myself and, you know, deal with my insecurity and my fears. And they just weren’t working. And they were taking a toll on my relationship for sure, but also just making me, like, a very not present father.”

What Patrick J. Adams Did To Make Sure He Isn’t An Absent Father

After spending 8 seasons as a series regular in ‘Suits’ – he left shortly after Meghan Markle – he was forced to do a complete re-examination of his life, find out what’s wrong, and fix it. Fixing it meant that he had to try harder to be “present” for his two daughters; Aurora, 6, and Elliot, 3, who he shares with ‘Pretty Little Liars’ alum Troian Bellisario, 39.

“That for me was a breaking point when I was like, ‘I think I should stop drinking probably, because I don’t wanna be that dad,’ “ Adams told Ferguson. “I was missing it. The best thing I think I ever did for myself was stop stop drinking. It just needed to happen in order for all these other things to happen.”

Alcohol had to go if he was going to be serious about making his life better.

As he shared, “There was really no way I was gonna take my mental health seriously, take my physical health seriously, work on my marriage, work on my friendships, you know, deal with my fears and my anxiety. I just couldn’t have done any of it if alcohol was still in the picture.”

Whenever he gets it in his head to “drift,” he makes sure to remind himself: “I have this new beautiful existence with new relationships and people that rely on me in a way that they couldn’t totally rely on me before, and two little beautiful children who I get to hang out with and try and be a good dad to, and can always be better.”

“There’s always better,” he shared.

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