Josh Brolin Reveals in New Memoir That He Tried Acid at 13 And Once Got Stabbed Before Turning His Life Around (Exclusive)

Josh Brolin has a bright future after a difficult past.

The actor, 56, opened up about the upcoming memoir Under the truck about his experience with drugs and violence and spoke to PEOPLE about his journey for a story in this week’s print edition.

In his book, published on November 19, There is no country for old men star told how he first took acid with his surf group the Cito Rats and how he was stabbed on the street in Costa Rica in 2013 after a stranger asked him for a cigarette or money.

Brolin wrote that he was “stabbed in the navel,” which ended up saving his life. “The umbilical ligament is the densest ligament in the body and slowed the knife enough to prevent it from striking vital organs,” he wrote.

Cover of Josh Brolin’s Under the Truck.

Joey Feldman

During the harrowing experience, the actor and his wife Kathryn waited outside their hotel for an ambulance. After she brought him the phone, he called his ex-wife Alice Adair – the mother of his two eldest children – to tell her what had happened. “I know what I need to do, but you’re going to be fine,” she told him.

“He’ll talk to the kids about what I loved most about them, what they meant to me, and how I know they’ll grow into a future they can be proud of and not spiral into shame about.” he wrote.

Steven Spielberg ruled out Josh Brolin on this piece Goonies Feedback: ‘He Was Right’ (Exclusive)

Now, Brolin is living a sober life after interacting with his 99-year-old grandmother in 2013.

While appearing on Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson’s podcast Where everyone knows your name in September, the actor reflected on his last night of drinking after telling them he had hit rock bottom and was “much worse than [that]at the age of 15.

Josh Brolin by Doug Inglish in 2024 for ESQUIRE.

Doug Inglish/Trunk Archives

Regarding his last drunken night, he recalled: “There was a fight at Del Tac’s” where he “woke up on the sidewalk.”

“I didn’t know where my car was, and it wasn’t that rare,” Brolin said. “It was only, you know, the 400th time it happened.”

The PEOPLE Puzzler has arrived! How fast can you solve it? Play now!

But that night, the Marvel alum was supposed to pick up his brother so they could go visit his grandmother, who “was on her deathbed.” He continued, “Anyway, I woke up on the sidewalk, went inside. My brother called me. ‘Where are you?’ I picked him up and ended up walking into the hospital.”

When he entered the hospital room, he said his grandmother “raised her head and looked at me and smiled and that was it.”

Josh Brolin and his two older children, Eden and Trevor.

Josh Brolin/Instagram

That interaction encouraged him to change for the better. “I’m done. I said, ‘If this woman could survive 99 years under the conditions of her life, how dare I?’ Brolin explained. “I was 45 years old and I got away with a lot, I was in prison nine times, I did little of anything. So I thought, I wonder if I could do that half of my life like this and then this half of this life then I will live two life, not just one.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

While speaking with PEOPLE in an exclusive interview for this week’s print edition, Brolin reflected on his life now and his long marriage to Kathryn, his wife of eight years.

Kathryn Brolin and their daughters Westlyn and Chapel.

Josh Brolin/Instagram

“The only thing you can change is yourself,” he says of the lessons he’s learned about love. “And drinking probably doesn’t help the relationship if you reacted to alcohol like I did.”

Brolin, who is father to four children — Trevor Mansur, 36, and Eden, 29, who he shares with Adair, and daughters Westlyn Reign, 6, and Chapel Grace, 3, with Kathryn — says his current life is “more raw. More bare .”

“The fear is still there, but I just don’t care as much about it. That’s the beauty of age, man. I wouldn’t want to be in my 20s again,” he says. “I just have no interest in going back. As crazy as life sometimes makes me, and as frustrated as I am with myself, I really think, ‘What a gift.’ ”

Under the truck cis out on November 19 and is available for pre-order now, wherever books are sold.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education