Rob Lowe Reflects On 34 Years Of Sobriety: “You Only Stop When You’re Ready”
Rob Lowe, now 60, has been sober for 34 years, but his journey to sobriety wasn’t a sudden decision. Instead, it was a series of small moments and realizations that ultimately led him to quit drinking in 1990. In a candid interview with PEOPLE, Rob opened up about the pivotal experiences that shaped his path to recovery.
“Getting sober was an incremental decision,” Rob shared, adding, “It’s baby steps until you’re ready. You can’t do it until you’re really ready.”
His journey began long before he entered rehab at Sierra Tucson, with each step bringing him closer to the clarity he needed to make a lasting change.
One of the early wake-up calls came when Rob watched the 1975 romantic comedy Shampoo, starring Warren Beatty, a Hollywood hero of his.
“It’s a great movie, but at the end, he’s a bon vivant, charming playboy left with nothing. It affected me tremendously and [was] the first glimmer of your conscience, your destiny, God, going, ‘Psst, pay attention to this,'” he stated.
But it wasn’t until the infamous fallout from a leaked sex tape in 1988, showing Rob with two young women during the Democratic Convention, that he began to reevaluate his life more seriously.
“[The fallout] definitely changed my life at the time, and, in hindsight, I realized it was another step that led me to recovery and reevaluating my life. But the thing that really changed me was not being able to show up for my family and myself,” he said.
However, the true turning point came in 1990, during a deeply personal moment. Rob’s beloved grandfather had a heart attack, and his mother desperately tried to reach him. “I remember like it was yesterday: My mom telling me [on the answering machine] to ‘pick up, pick up’ because my grandpa had had a heart attack,” he recalled.
But Rob, unable to face the situation, turned to tequila instead. “I couldn’t deal with it in the state I was in, and I needed to go to sleep to wake up so I could deal with it.”
That night, with a bottle of Cuervo Gold by his bedside, Rob realized he had reached his limit. “That was the final wake-up call. I’ve been sober ever since,” he said.
By the time Rob checked into rehab, he was ready for the change. “It was relieving, and it was scary, [but] I learned the tools to change your life if you have the self-honesty to do it,” he explained. In rehab, he found comfort in knowing he wasn’t alone in his struggles. “I felt, ‘Oh, okay, I’m not alone. I’m not crazy.'”
Rob never looked back once he made the decision to quit drinking. “I didn’t have any doubts [and] I wasn’t like, well, maybe I’ll be sober for a little bit,” he said. “I always tell people: you can’t get sober… I don’t care if it’s fentanyl, booze, drugs, coke, pot, gambling, overeating, sex addiction, whatever, you cannot stop for your job, your wife, your family, your parole officer, because you screwed something up.”
Ultimately, Rob believes that sobriety is a deeply personal choice. “You only are going to stop when you’re ready, period,” he chimed in.
