NEW YORK — Experts are weighing in on Brad Pitt’s bombshell revelation that he’s hopped off the proverbial wagon after seven years of sobriety, noting that while some people who quit drinking alcohol can resume, success is not a given.

“When he said he’s drinking moderately after seven years of abstinence, there’s a bunch of different things going on there,” clinical social worker and policy advocate Joe Schrank told The Hollywood Reporter. “Typically speaking, alcoholics are just a horrible source of information about themselves.”

However, it has been known to happen, Schrank said, noting that the World Health Organization has found cases in which “with moderate drinking, even after long periods of abstinence, there are lots of people who find success of clinical significance and life improvement.”

Where Pitt would fall on that spectrum is anybody’s guess, he said.

“I was sober for seven years. And then I got back off the wagon,” Pitt told Esquire in a recent interview. “In a more restrained manner.”

Getting “overconfident” once or twice taught him that “big quantities” are a no-go but that “a few” glasses of wine are manageable.

“I can’t have a lot,” he said. “I have to be professional about it.”

The admission, an aside in a wide-ranging interview, raised eyebrows in the recovery community given the star’s very public embrace of sobriety after joining a 12-step program following his 2016 split from wife Angelina Jolie. He has opened up about “boozing too much” and its effect on visitation and custody with the six children the two share; reflected on alcoholism and mulled past mistakes with Sir Anthony Hopkins; expounded upon the feeling of safety he had in AA meetings, and candidly admitted it had provided a needed “reboot” after his breakup.

Although he reportedly had good relationships with his kids back in 2022, four of his children with Jolie are dropping his surname.

Alcoholics Anonymous, which Pitt attended for 18 months after Jolie filed for divorce in 2016, sees sobriety as all-or-nothing with no exceptions, Schrank pointed out.

But lifelong abstinence is not a given, experts said. Success can depend on how deep their dependency goes, their level of social capital, and whether there are any underlying psychiatric problems, Stanford University psychiatry professor and addiction researcher Keith Humphreys told The Hollywood Reporter.

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