Celebrating 55 years of sobriety, Danny Trejo claims he has “done this one day at a time.” The 79-year-old “Machete Kills” actor shared his success on Instagram this week and gave advice to those who are trying to quit using drugs and alcohol.
“By God’s grace, I’ve been sober and clean for 55 years today! For everyone battling out there, I’ve done this one day at a time, and YOU CAN TOO!” he exclaimed on Wednesday.
Trejo spent 11 years in and out of California’s most infamous prisons for crimes including trafficking drugs and armed robberies after a challenging upbringing, as he describes in his biography “Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood.”
In a 2021 interview with “CBS Mornings,” Trejo claimed that a turning point in 1968 inspired him to make a life shift.
‘Lord, if you let me die with respect, I’ll recite your name each day and I’ll do anything you can for my fellow inmate,’ I vowed. And I said inmate because I never imagined I’d be released from prison, he added.
After being released in 1969, he continued to attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and went on to work as a drug counselor. He visited the “Runaway Train” set about 15 years later in an effort to assist a suffering addict. The film’s director, Andrei Konchalovsky, noticed Trejo’s glare and, after learning that he had been a boxing champion while incarcerated, paired him up with Runaway Train actor Eric Roberts. Trejo’s career was sparked by it, and he has since made almost 400 appearances on film.
According to Trejo, “everything good that’s happened to me has come about directly as a result of helping someone else,” he told CBS Mornings.