Adele is no longer drinking — or soaking up — wine after realizing that she had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol in her 20s.
“I stopped drinking quite a long time ago … I stopped drinking, when did I stop drinking? It feels like forever,” Adele, 35, told the audience at her Las Vegas show earlier this month. “Maybe, like, three and a half months ago.”
The Grammy winner joked that “it’s boring” not indulging in liquor. “I mean, oh my God, it’s boring,” she said in a clip from the event posted by a concertgoer via X, sharing, “I was literally borderline alcoholic for quite a lot of my twenties, but I miss it so much.”
Adele further explained that she “cut out caffeine” as well. She then told an audience member to “enjoy your whiskey sour,” confessing, “I’m very, very jealous.”
The musician has been vocal over the years about her issues with drinking some of which is pegged to losing her estranged father, Mark Evans, in May 2021. While Evans died from bowel cancer, he battled an alcohol addiction for much of his life.
“I was always very fascinated by alcohol. It’s what kept my dad from me,” Adele told Vogue in October 2021. “So I always wanted to know what was so great about it.”
Adele also hinted at her highs and lows with alcohol — and childhood trauma attached to it — in 2021’s “I Drink Wine.”
“When I was a child, every single thing could blow my mind / Soaking it all in for fun, but now I only soak up wine,” she sings in the ballad. “They say you play hard, you work hard, find balance in the sacrifice / Yet I don’t know anybody who’s truly satisfied.”
After releasing her album 30 in November 2021, which includes “I Drink Wine,” Adele revealed that she cut out alcohol following her divorce from Simon Konecki and overconsumption during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Adele and Konecki, 49, split in 2019 and finalized the divorce two years later. The exes share one son, Angelo, 10.)
“I stopped drinking. That’s one great way of really sort of getting to know yourself is being sober,” Adele shared during her November 2021 CBS Adele One Night Only concert.
She joked that at the beginning of her divorce she “kept the alcohol industry alive,” but that quickly changed. “Once I realized I had a lot of work to do on myself, I stopped drinking and started working out lots to keep me sort of centered,” the singer recalled.
Earlier this year, Adele told concertgoers at a March performance of her Las Vegas residency that her drinking progressed at the height of the pandemic before she ultimately cut out liquor.
“I remember when I came here in COVID, in lockdown. It was 11 a.m., and I was definitely, like, four bottles of wine in — like we all were,” she told her fans via the Evening Standard. “I said in 2020 that I wanted to put my album out. And we were all at home just drunk basically.”
If you or anyone you know is facing substance abuse issues, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357 for free and confidential information 24/7.
