Ben Affleck details brave journey to sobriety

Ben Affleck is getting candid about his sobriety journey.

The 54-year-old actor, who has been sober for more than five years, revealed that he needed to hit "rock bottom" to develop a genuine desire to change his life.

"When addiction starts to really take hold, it’s not enough to have it in your front brain and say: 'This is something I want to change. This isn’t good for me," Ben told Variety.

"Something has to click on an amygdala level. That’s where the 'rock bottom' cliché comes from. It’s the same thing: You’ve got to suffer enough to have something at stake you don’t want to lose," he continued.

"Long-term sobriety, the gift of it is that it just gets easier. It seemed to me that part of it is you’ve got to run up against something difficult and painful enough," The Accountant star said. "But the good news is that’s different for everybody - you’ve got to understand what you can control and what you can’t."

Ben added that he made peace with his mortality after losing both of his parents.

"Both of my parents passed away this year ... One of the things you grapple with at my age when parents die is there’s a comfort and awareness in knowing this is how it’s supposed to go," he said. "When I go, it will be hard for my children, but none of us want it any other way. My mom said to me at the end of her life: 'God, I thought 84 years would seem longer.'

"And I thought: 'I bet, because I thought 54 would seem longer,'" Ben added.

Work-wise, Ben is currently busy promoting with his new film, Animals.