Bollywood’s senior screenwriter Javed Akhtar has his own unique status in the industry. He is well liked for his writing. Along with achieving success in his career, Javed has also faced alcohol addiction in his life. Javed Akhtar became addicted to alcohol while he was at the peak of his career. Now in his new interview, the lyricist has said that if he could go back in time, he would have told his younger version to stay away from alcohol.
Javed said this on alcohol addiction
In an interview with the chat show Be a Man Yaar, Javed Akhtar was asked whether he was drinking alcohol because he was suppressing his emotions. On this Javed said that this can happen. He also told that after drinking alcohol, he used to become a devil when he was intoxicated. Akhtar said, ‘Maybe I had suppressed emotions, anger, bitterness. That’s why I became very abusive after drinking, which I’m not usually like, nor was I. This never happens while I am conscious. But PK used to come out as some other devil.
Javed Akhtar further said, ‘Giving up alcohol is one of the good things I have done in my life. July 31, 1991 was the last day I drank alcohol. I never took a sip of champagne after that, not even while cheering during the celebration. After this, the host of the chat show asked Javed what he would like to say to his young version. In response to this, the 79-year-old lyricist said, ‘I will tell him that he drank alcohol for 20-25 years, he should not do this.’
wasted 10 years of life
The lyricist said that if he had stayed away from the bottle, he could have made better use of his time. Javed said, ‘A lot of time was wasted in that. I feel that if nothing else, I have wasted a decade of my life because of this, when I could have done something better in that time. I could do a lot of things. Someone would learn to play an instrument, someone would learn languages like French and Persian. I had both time and convenience, but I wasted time, which is not good. I had to learn something else.
Earlier, Javed Akhtar’s wife and actress Shabana Azmi had talked about the lyricist’s alcohol addiction in an interview. In Arbaaz Khan’s chat show ‘The Invincible’, Shabana had described Javed’s period of alcohol addiction as ‘difficult’.