Signing you in

Pooja Bhatt grew up in a home where her father, filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, dealt with alcohol addiction for years. She has previously opened up about how her mother Kiran locked him out on the balcony in the middle of the night because he came back home in a drunk state, and she had to do something to teach him a lesson. Pooja, through her childhood, had seen how alcohol can destroy one’s peace and happiness. She had her first sip at 16 but never expected that one day, she would find herself turning into an alcoholic. And this time, it was her father who triggered her sobriety.

In a chat with Vickey Lalwani, Pooja shared that her excessive drinking started when her marriage to Manish Makhija was on the verge of breaking down. “I used alcohol as a crutch at that point,” she said and admitted that she “drank very heavily at that time.” She said, “I was at a low ebb of life because when marriages fall apart, and a relationship of 11 years falls apart, it’s like a death. I didn’t give myself the time to mourn it. I just said I am okay and people were happy with me saying I am okay.”

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Talking about her relationship with alcohol before this incident, Pooja said, “I used to be a social drinker before that, but that phase between 2014, when I knew my marriage was unravelling, to me ending it, those two years, I drank a lot because I was trying to put out the fire with gasoline. Alcohol makes you more aggressive; it doesn’t calm you down. It is not a painkiller.”

While her father was extremely supportive of her decision, the industry was not. “When I gave up alcohol, some of my friends, my own inner circle… They said, ‘She won’t be able to do it.’ When they saw me continue, they said, ‘Yaar, have one drink for me. It’s my birthday, have one drink, it’s my anniversary, have one drink. You have become boring after you quit alcohol’,” she recalled.

After a couple of years of being sober, when she called the local alcohol shop to order wine for someone else, she heard “fear” in that stranger’s voice. “There was fear in that guy’s voice saying that I heard you have quit. I said yes, I have quit. He said I thought you have called so…” In that moment, Pooja realised that a stranger had more empathy for her than some of her so-called friends in the industry. “A stranger, whose business is selling alcohol, had more empathy than certain people in my own circle. The industry was very judgmental. The world was not,” she said.

Decades ago, before Pooja’s encounter with alcoholism, she had revealed that she had once dated someone who had the same problem and as a result of his alcoholism, she became a victim of domestic abuse. In a chat with Rohit Roy on his show Inside Bollywood, she shared, “I was involved in a disastrous relationship with an alcoholic. Pooja Bhatt, who looks like a strong woman, was a victim of domestic abuse because of alcohol.”

Pooja has been public about her sobriety ever since she first went to bed sober on Christmas Eve 2016. In a chat with Mumbai Mirror in 2017, Pooja said, “I was born to a man who has never done anything in half measures and I inherited that. So when I drank, I drank copiously. Your appetite increases even as the alcohol does terrible things to your body, clutters your mind and colours your judgement of the people you’re hanging out with.”

Since then, every year, Pooja celebrates her sobriety anniversary with pride.

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