Bella Hadid celebrates 6 months of being sober
Supermodel Bella Hadid is celebrating a milestone with her fans.
The 26-year-old shared on Instagram Tuesday that she has not had alcohol for the past six months.
Hadid revealed her sober anniversary by posting a screengrab of an app that tracks sobriety in real time.
Hadid has been open about her relationship with alcohol and has been known to take breaks from drinking.
The star shared with InStyle in 2022 her reasons for cutting back, including feeling out of control, the negative health effects of drinking and her mental health.
"I have done my fair share of drinking. I loved alcohol and it got to the point where even I started to, you know, cancel nights out that I felt like I wouldn't be able to control myself," she told InStyle in January 2022.
Hadid's sobriety journey joins a growing trend of people reevaluating their relationship with alcohol, for example, putting muster behind the "sober curious" movement or normalizing alcohol "breaks" like Dry January, where people forgo alcohol for the month.
Kristina Wandzilak, an addiction specialist and the founder of Full Circle Addiction & Recovery Services, told "Good Morning America" that celebrities like Hadid are changing the face of sobriety.
"It used to be that you had to be alcoholic to take a break or to get sober, you know, and it's not the case today," said Wandzilak. "And I love seeing this whole younger generation doing it different and trying different things and learning how to connect with each other without using a drug."
Hadid joins other celebrities, including Chrissy Teigen, Drew Barrymore and Cheryl Burke, who have all been open about their road to sobriety.
"It can create some accountability and a lot of support if you have millions of followers that are joining you and celebrating you along the way," Wandzilak said of the benefits of a person sharing their sobriety publicly. "And it actually provides a lot of encouragement."
Hadid, who was recently named to Time Magazine's 100 most influential people list for 2023, is also no stranger to the nonalcoholic beverage trend. The supermodel is a partner and co-founder of the nonalcoholic beverage company Kin Euphorics.
Hadid told InStyle that before joining the company in 2021, she would regularly use Kin's products to help "calm" her brain.
"I don't feel the need [to drink alcohol] because I know how it will affect me at 3 in the morning when I wake up with horrible anxiety thinking about that one thing I said five years ago when I graduated high school," Hadid told InStyle.
In addition to the mental health benefits of sobriety Hadid says she experienced, recent research has shown that drinking just a daily serving of alcohol of less than 1 ounce for women and around 1.5 ounces for men increased the risk of death.
For women, a moderate alcohol intake per week is defined as seven servings of alcohol or less. For men, it is 14 servings of alcohol or less per week, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Heavy drinking is typically defined as consuming eight drinks or more per week, according to the CDC.
One serving of alcohol is defined as 5 ounces for wine and just 1 1/2 ounces for hard alcohol, far less than what is typically served in bars, restaurants and people's homes.
