Andrew Lloyd Webber has revealed he is a recovering alcoholic.
The Evita impresario shared that he secretly drank for years after he claimed to have quit.
Lloyd Webber opened up about his journey with alcohol during an interview with The Times.
“I am a recovering alcoholic,” he told the outlet. “Sixteen months ago, I decided that I needed help, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
The composer said he previously stopped drinking while producing School of Rock on Broadway between 2015 and 2016, but didn’t establish the proper support systems to guide him through the process.
“I was doing what they call ‘white-knuckling,’ without any backup,” he explained.
Lloyd Webber said that he also began to fear that perhaps alcohol was part of the reason for his success.
“I started to worry that I wasn’t being creative,” he shared. “And I thought, ‘But I’ve said to everybody that I’m not drinking.’ So I started to drink secretly. You think it’s secret, but it’s not. Everybody knows.”
Lloyd Webber went on to share that he started to go through a “downhill spiral” that culminated about 18 months ago, leaving his family at their wits’ end.
“My wife was feeling she couldn’t go on,” Lloyd Webber said.
He then checked himself into a rehabilitation clinic, which didn’t work for him, so he went to his first-ever Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting, which he described as life-changing.
“What I love about it is, you go into a room and everybody’s equal. I’ve made friends that I wouldn’t have thought possible,” Lloyd Webber said.
The Phantom of the Opera composer now attends a meeting every single day, regardless of what city he’s in.
