Chet Hanks has shared a video detailing his journey with sobriety amid Shia LaBeouf’s apparent alcoholism relapse in New Orleans, where he was arrested following an incident.
In an extensive video shared on Instagram, Hanks said that he’s now four and a half years sober and feels “full of life.” He said that he’s aware people might doubt his sobriety, but he maintained that he’s in a much better place now. “There's a lot of shit I could say about why I'm sober, why I still choose to be sober. I could go on forever,” he said. “If I'm getting high, drinking, doing drugs, I'm a bitch. I'm a weak little bitch. Okay? I'm Shia LaBeouf getting his ass whooped in the street.”
He said that he means “no disrespect” to LaBeouf, and that he “fucking loves” the troubled actor, but it’s been made abundantly clear to him that there’s something wrong amid his arrest in New Orleans.
“The young lady that I'd like to have sex with, she doesn't want to have sex with me? It's okay. I still know that I'm him,” he continued. Hanks said that he looked up to movie characters while growing up, particularly Brad Pitt’s character Tyler Durden in Fight Club. “I wanted to be like him. … Having that element of just chaos, spontaneity, fucking unpredictability,” he said. “I looked up to that and I related to that because it's kind of always kind of how I've kind of been too, within myself.”
But he admitted that he grew up to realize that “doing a bunch of coke and just getting all wild and drunk” wasn’t the qualities he admired in Durden, a character who is an imagined alter-ego of Edward Norton’s unnamed character. “That's not being Tyler Durden, bro. Because... All that means is that you're constantly trying to fill the lack of feeling like Tyler Durden that is always within you,” he said. “If you truly feel that you are not that guy, you're not him, [and] you need to do all the substances so you can feel like you're him… That's addiction. That is what fuels addiction. The only way to truly become your own embodiment of Tyler Durden, of being him, of being that dude, is to do it without any substances.”
He urged people to understand that recovery “doesn’t happen right away,” and that it’s a long process.
“I want to tell Shia LaBeouf this. Shia, I fuck with you, bro. You're such a fucking incredible artist,” he said. “I'm so inspired by your work. Like, I'm an actor, but I aspire to be the kind of artist that you are in my craft. You know what I mean? The moment in Fury where you fucking repeat the Bible verse, here am I, send me. I fucking cry every time. Salvable. If y'all haven't seen that, go watch it. Salvable. Shia, his performance, incredible.”
Hanks maintained that he has a lot of respect for LaBeouf, but became concerned about him after watching his interview with YouTuber Andrew Callaghan.
“Shia, bro, I love you. I love your work, I respect you, but just don't be a bitch, bro. Like, I watched your interview on Channel 5, shout out to Andrew,” he said. “I fucking get it. I crave that chaos and that maniacal joy and not just the AA… There's times when I'm like, yeah, I want to just rip a fucking eight ball and just go fucking crazy. You know what I'm saying? And be Tyler Durden, but that's not being Tyler Durden, bro. That's not being him. The way to be him is this, bro. I'm, you know, free. Because my ego has died. Because I know that none of this shit is real. None of this shit matters. And we're all going to fucking die. And that's not something to be, like, sad about.”