{"id":466415,"date":"2026-05-29T16:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T16:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/466415\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T16:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T16:37:10","slug":"pooja-bhatt-recalls-message-from-mahesh-bhatt-which-made-her-quit-alcohol-after-struggling-with-it-for-years-due-to-troubles-in-her-marriage-hindi-movie-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/466415\/","title":{"rendered":"Pooja Bhatt recalls message from Mahesh Bhatt which made her quit alcohol after struggling with it for years due to troubles in her marriage | Hindi Movie News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pooja Pooja Bhatt<\/a> has never shied away from speaking honestly about addiction, emotional pain and her journey towards healing. Having grown up witnessing her father Mahesh Bhatt<\/a>\u2019s battle with alcoholism, the actor-filmmaker once believed she understood the damage alcohol could cause. However, years later, during a difficult phase in her own life, she found herself struggling with the same problem.Pooja opened up about the period when her marriage to Manish Makhija was falling apart and how alcohol slowly became an emotional escape for her. \u201cI used alcohol as a crutch at that point,\u201d she admitted in an interview with Vickey Lalwani, adding that she \u201cdrank very heavily at that time.\u201dReflecting on that emotionally turbulent phase, Pooja said, \u201cI was at a low ebb of life because when marriages fall apart, and a relationship of 11 years falls apart, it\u2019s like a death. I didn\u2019t give myself the time to mourn it. I just said I am okay and people were happy with me saying I am okay.\u201d Before her marriage troubles, Pooja described herself as someone who drank socially. But between 2014, when she realised her relationship was unravelling, and the eventual separation, her dependence on alcohol intensified.\u201cI used to be a social drinker before that, but that phase between 2014, when I knew my marriage was unravelling, to me ending it, those two years, I drank a lot because I was trying to put out the fire with gasoline. Alcohol makes you more aggressive; it doesn\u2019t calm you down. It is not a painkiller,\u201d she shared. The turning point came in December 2016 after a deeply personal message from her father. Around Christmas<\/a>, while exchanging messages filled with affection, Mahesh Bhatt told her, \u201cIf you love me, then learn to love yourself because I live in you.\u201dPooja revealed that those words transformed her life completely. \u201cIt\u2019s been 10 years, I haven\u2019t had a drop of alcohol. I started loving myself 10 years ago, and that love story still continues and it\u2019s going very well. I am very content,\u201d she said.While Mahesh Bhatt fully supported her decision to quit alcohol, Pooja admitted that many people around her in the industry reacted differently. \u201cWhen I gave up alcohol, some of my friends, my own inner circle\u2026 They said, \u2018She won\u2019t be able to do it.\u2019 When they saw me continue, they said, \u2018Yaar, have one drink for me. It\u2019s my birthday, have one drink, it\u2019s my anniversary, have one drink. You have become boring after you quit alcohol\u2019,\u201d she recalled.She also shared an incident that stayed with her years into sobriety. When she once called a local liquor shop to order wine for someone else, the man on the other end sounded nervous. \u201cThere was fear in that guy\u2019s voice saying that I heard you have quit. I said yes, I have quit. He said I thought you have called so\u2026\u201dThat interaction made her realise how empathy sometimes came from strangers rather than people close to her. \u201cA stranger, whose business is selling alcohol, had more empathy than certain people in my own circle. The industry was very judgmental. The world was not,\u201d she said.Long before confronting her own addiction, Pooja had also experienced the damaging impact of alcoholism through a past relationship. Speaking to Rohit Roy on his show Inside Bollywood, she had earlier revealed that she endured domestic abuse because of a partner\u2019s addiction issues.\u201cI was involved in a disastrous relationship with an alcoholic. Pooja Bhatt, who looks like a strong woman, was a victim of domestic abuse because of alcohol,\u201d she had shared.Pooja has remained vocal about her sobriety ever since choosing to quit drinking on Christmas Eve in 2016. In an earlier interview with Mumbai Mirror in 2017, she reflected on inheriting an intense personality from her father. \u201cI was born to a man who has never done anything in half measures and I inherited that. So when I drank, I drank copiously. Your appetite increases even as the alcohol does terrible things to your body, clutters your mind and colours your judgement of the people you\u2019re hanging out with,\u201d she had said.Over the years, Pooja Bhatt has continued to celebrate every milestone in her sobriety journey, often speaking openly about self-love, healing and choosing peace over self-destruction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pooja Bhatt has never shied away from speaking honestly about addiction, emotional pain and her journey towards healing.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[5301,87535,458,39529,94625,216875,146,85,46,23993,522,20096,148925,216874],"class_list":["post-466415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-addiction","tag-alcoholism","tag-celebrities","tag-christmas","tag-domestic-abuse","tag-emotional-pain","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-mahesh-bhatt","tag-mental-health","tag-pooja-bhatt","tag-self-love","tag-sobriety-journey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}