Famous athletes who chose sobriety
- Cristiano Ronaldo
- Tom Brady
- Floyd Mayweather
- Lewis Hamilton
- Michael Phelps
- Manny Pacquiao
- Tyson Fury
- Brett Favre
- Maxx Crosby
- Abby Wambach
Professional athletes push their bodies to the absolute limit. They obsess over sleep schedules, calorie counts, and recovery protocols — so it should come as no surprise that many of the world’s greatest competitors have cut alcohol out of their lives entirely. What might surprise you is why they did it.
Some never touched the stuff. Others hit rock bottom before clawing their way back to the top. Either way, the results speak for themselves: championships, Olympic gold, undefeated records, and fortunes worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Here are ten famous athletes who prove you don’t need a drink to be the best in the world.
Cristiano Ronaldo
Net worth: 1.2 billion USD
Cristiano Ronaldo is the highest-paid footballer on the planet and, as CNN reported in 2025, the first soccer player in history to become a billionaire. He is a five-time Ballon d’Or winner with over 900 career goals — and he has never been a drinker.
The reason is deeply personal. Ronaldo’s father, José Dinis Aveiro, was a gardener and military veteran who struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. He died of liver failure in 2005 at just 52 years old. In an emotional 2019 interview on ITV, Ronaldo broke down in tears when shown previously unseen footage of his father, saying: “I really don’t know my father 100 per cent. He was a drunk person. I never spoke with him, like a normal conversation.”
That loss shaped Ronaldo’s approach to his body and his career. He maintains one of the most rigorous fitness regimens in professional sports, and alcohol simply has no place in it. The only known exception came after Portugal’s stunning Euro 2016 triumph, when Ronaldo admitted he drank a single glass of champagne during the celebrations — and said it went straight to his head because he was so dehydrated from crying.
Tom Brady
Net worth: 300 million USD
Seven Super Bowl rings. Three MVP awards. The greatest quarterback in NFL history. Tom Brady built a career that defied everything we thought we knew about athletic longevity — and his relationship with alcohol, or rather his avoidance of it, was a core part of how he did it.
Brady’s famous TB12 Method, developed with his trainer Alex Guerrero, explicitly lists alcohol as off-limits. As Healthline notes in its breakdown of the diet, alcohol is classified as a pro-inflammatory substance alongside sugar, refined carbohydrates, and caffeine — all of which Brady avoids. His daily routine instead revolves around 12 to 25 glasses of water, plant-based meals, and going to bed at 8:30 p.m.
The discipline clearly worked. Brady played until he was 45 — roughly a decade longer than the average NFL quarterback — and showed no signs of slowing down until he chose to retire. He has since signed a 375 million dollar broadcasting deal with Fox Sports, the largest in television history. When asked if his diet is extreme, Brady told NBC’s Today: “I don’t think it’s a strict regimen. I think it’s just trying to make healthy choices.”
Floyd Mayweather
Net worth: 400 million USD
Floyd “Money” Mayweather retired from professional boxing with a perfect 50-0 record and career earnings exceeding $1.1 billion. He is, by any measure, the most financially successful boxer who ever lived — and he has never consumed alcohol.
On The Pivot Podcast, Mayweather explained his reasoning simply: “I just seen just so many different substances break everybody down. Break so many blacks down. Entertainers, athletes.” For Mayweather, watching addiction destroy the people around him was enough to convince him never to start.
The most remarkable part is where he doesn’t drink. As former opponent Andre Berto told The Sun, Mayweather would routinely spend $40,000 on bottles at nightclubs — while drinking nothing himself. “Everybody is drinking. Floyd’s not drinking,” Berto recalled. “He’s paying for everything but he’s not drinking.” Then, at 1 a.m., Mayweather would have his running shoes pulled from the car and head straight to the gym to train until sunrise.
In a twist that only Mayweather could pull off, he launched his own whiskey and champagne brands in 2023 — despite never having tasted either product. Fans were not amused.
Lewis Hamilton
Net worth: 450 million USD
Lewis Hamilton is the most decorated Formula One driver in history, with seven World Championships and over 100 race victories. He’s also one of the richest athletes on the planet — and in 2023, he stopped drinking entirely.
Hamilton told Vogue that he’d been drinking since the age of 16 and that hangovers would knock him out for three or four days at a time. After four months without a drink, he said: “Since I’ve stopped drinking, I’ve just been feeling so much better, so much more clarity. I sleep better, I wake up in the morning and I can still get up at 5 am.” He added that he wasn’t sure if he would ever drink again.
Rather than just walking away from alcohol, Hamilton turned his sobriety into a business. In October 2023, he launched Almave, a premium non-alcoholic spirit made from blue agave in Mexico, in partnership with master distiller Iván Saldaña. As Entrepreneur reported, Hamilton saw a gap in the $1.3 trillion non-alcoholic beverage market and decided to fill it himself. Pernod Ricard, one of the world’s largest spirits companies, quickly invested in a minority stake.
Michael Phelps
Net worth: 100 million USD
Michael Phelps is the most decorated Olympian of all time, with 28 medals — 23 of them gold. But behind the record books was a man who, in his own words, “didn’t want to see another day.”
Phelps struggled with alcohol for years. A DUI arrest at age 19 in 2004 was an early warning sign, and a 2009 suspension after a photo of him with a bong surfaced made headlines worldwide. Then, in September 2014, he was arrested for a second DUI in Maryland after being clocked at 84 mph in a 45-mph zone with a blood-alcohol level of .14. As Sports Illustrated reported, USA Swimming banned him for six months and stripped his eligibility for the 2015 World Championships.
That arrest became the turning point. Phelps checked into a residential rehab facility for a six-week program. His longtime coach Bob Bowman later admitted he’d been praying for that moment: “I had been living in fear that I was going to get a call that something had happened.” In rehab, Phelps began to treat his recovery the same way he treated training — like a competition he was determined to win. He also started rebuilding his relationship with his father, something he’d carried unresolved for 20 years.
Sober and focused, Phelps returned to the pool for the 2016 Rio Olympics and won five more gold medals — becoming, for the final time, the greatest swimmer who ever lived. He has since become one of the most prominent mental health advocates in professional sports, telling audiences: “You can only get help if you ask for it.”
Manny Pacquiao
Net worth: 220 million USD
Manny Pacquiao is the only boxer in history to win world titles in eight different weight divisions. Over a 25-year career, he amassed 62 wins and earned more than $500 million in purses and endorsements. He was also, by his own admission, a mess.
At the height of his fame, Pacquiao’s drinking, gambling, and womanizing were spiraling out of control. “I went to church on Sunday, but from Monday through Saturday I was in the bar drinking,” he told Christianity Today. “I was gambling. I committed adultery. I didn’t care.” His spending was so reckless that he had to take seven-figure advances from promoter Bob Arum just to cover his gambling debts.
The turning point came in 2012, when Pacquiao experienced a religious conversion to evangelical Christianity. As ESPN reported, he abandoned his casino interests, sold his nightclub, and stopped drinking entirely. His trainer Freddie Roach confirmed the transformation: “He doesn’t drink anymore. He doesn’t chase girls anymore. Him and his wife are getting along a lot better now. He’s become a much better person.”
Roach did add one caveat with a grin: the newfound peace may have slightly dulled Pacquiao’s killer instinct in the ring. But Pacquiao has had no regrets. “The best thing that has happened in my life,” he has said, “was that I encountered God.”
Tyson Fury
Net worth: 160 million USD
In November 2015, Tyson Fury shocked the boxing world by dethroning Wladimir Klitschko to become the unified heavyweight champion. What happened next shocked everyone even more: he essentially disappeared.
As Fury told ESPN, achieving his lifelong dream left him with a “massive, gaping hole of emptiness.” He spiraled into depression, ballooned to over 400 pounds, and began drinking 20 pints of beer four or five times a week. He also admitted to Rolling Stone that he had done “lots of cocaine.” He was stripped of his titles, lost his boxing license, and was declared medically unfit to compete.
But Fury clawed his way back. He found a new trainer, began losing weight, went through therapy, and stopped drinking. By June 2018 — 924 days after his last fight — he returned to the ring. Six months later, he fought Deontay Wilder to a dramatic draw in one of boxing’s most stunning comebacks. After the fight, Fury dedicated the moment to everyone struggling with mental health: “I just showed the world tonight that you can come back and it can be done.”
Fury’s openness about his battles with depression and addiction has made him one of boxing’s most compelling advocates for mental health — proof that the toughest fight is often the one you can’t see.
Brett Favre
Net worth: 100 million USD
Brett Favre won three consecutive NFL MVP awards, a Super Bowl ring, and started 321 consecutive games — a record of durability for a quarterback that may never be broken. He accomplished much of this while secretly addicted to painkillers and alcohol.
Favre’s troubles began in 1994, when he separated his shoulder against the Eagles and was prescribed Vicodin. As he told Sports Illustrated, he was taking as many as 14 Vicodin at a time by the 1995 season — the same year he won his first MVP. He later suffered a seizure in a hospital room after ankle surgery, thrashing and banging his head uncontrollably while his girlfriend and daughter looked on.
Favre made three separate trips to rehab during his career, as he revealed to ESPN in 2018. The first two addressed his Vicodin dependency, but it was the third trip, in 1998, that finally tackled his alcoholism head-on. “I admitted my problem, I was in there for 28 days, and it worked,” he said. The hardest part was realizing that the only reason he’d wanted to play golf was so he could drink.
Favre has been sober since 1998 — through the rest of his Hall of Fame career, his retirement, and beyond. He has described the period of active addiction as the lowest point of his life: “I was as low as I possibly could be, even though I had won the Super Bowl and won three MVPs in a row.”
Maxx Crosby
Contract: 106.5 million USD
Maxx Crosby is one of the most dominant defensive ends in the NFL, a four-time Pro Bowl selection who in 2025 signed the largest contract ever given to a non-quarterback. He is also a self-described alcoholic — and he’ll be the first to tell you.
Crosby was a fourth-round pick out of Eastern Michigan who racked up 10 sacks as a rookie with the Raiders. But as he told ESPN, the drinking that had followed him since high school spiraled out of control after his first season. “It got to a point after my rookie year my life became unmanageable,” he said. “Alcoholism runs in my family and I’m an alcoholic.”
On March 11, 2020 — a date he now has tattooed on his right hand — Crosby checked into rehab. He stayed for a month and then moved into a sober living facility in Venice Beach until training camp. His sobriety triangle tattoos, inked on his neck and across his body, serve as daily reminders of the commitment he made.
The results have been staggering. Since getting sober, Crosby has made four consecutive Pro Bowls, earned two All-Pro selections, and signed that record-breaking extension — which he originally inked on the two-year anniversary of his sobriety. As he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Without my sobriety, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
Abby Wambach
Net worth: 4 million USD
Abby Wambach is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, a FIFA World Cup champion, and the all-time leading goal scorer in U.S. women’s soccer history. She also spent years as what she calls a “high-functioning alcoholic.”
In her memoir Forward, Wambach revealed that she had abused alcohol since her early twenties, eventually adding Vicodin, Ambien, and Adderall to the mix. “Everything really powerfully good in my life has happened in my sobriety,” she wrote, “and I won gold medals as a high functioning alcoholic.” As Sports Illustrated reported, the book was originally supposed to be about her legendary soccer career — until her DUI arrest changed the entire story.
The breaking point came on April 3, 2016, when Wambach was arrested for driving under the influence after running a red light in Portland. As she told TIME, the public humiliation of having her mugshot plastered across the internet became the wake-up call she needed. She hasn’t had a drink since that night.
Wambach’s sobriety led her somewhere unexpected. During her book tour, she met author Glennon Doyle — another sober woman — and the two eventually married. “A year and a half ago when I was really struggling and pretty sick,” Wambach reflected, “if you were to tell me I’d be a stepmom and sober and living in Florida and as happy as I’ve ever been, I would have called you a liar.”
Sobriety and Peak Performance
The athletes on this list span six different sports, four decades, and a combined net worth north of $3 billion. Some never drank a drop. Others nearly lost everything before finding sobriety. But all of them arrived at the same conclusion: alcohol wasn’t helping them get where they wanted to go.
You don’t have to be a world champion to benefit from that realization. Whether you’re chasing a personal record at the gym or just trying to sleep better and feel sharper, the evidence from the world’s best athletes is pretty clear — less booze, more results.