Ben Affleck turned to alcohol once again because he felt “trapped” in his marriage to Jennifer Garner.
While appearing on The Howard Stern Show, the 49-year-old actor candidly admitted that he would still possibly be drinking alcohol if he was still married to the 13 Going on 30 star.
“I’d probably still be drinking. It’s part of why I started drinking… because I was trapped,” Affleck admitted to the veteran radio host. “I was like, ‘I can’t leave ’cause of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ What I did was drink a bottle of scotch and fall asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”
The Last Duel actor was married to Garner between 2005 and 2015, when they separated. He has sought treatment for alcoholism multiple times since 2001, most recently in 2018, the year their divorce was finalised.
Affleck insisted that he and Garner fought hard to save their marriage for the sake of their three children – Violet, 16, Seraphina, 12, and Samuel, nine – but weren’t able to make it work.
“The truth was, we took our time, we made the decision… We grew apart. We had a marriage that didn’t work, this happens, with somebody that I love and respect, but to whom I shouldn’t be married any longer. Ultimately, we tried. We tried, we tried because we had kids,” he continued. “Both of us felt like we don’t want this to be the model that our kids see of marriage.”