Ashley McBryde is sharing new insight into her time in rehab. In 2022, McBryde quit drinking, waiting almost a year to reveal she was proudly sober. But it’s only in recent months that McBryde has shared details about her sobriety, which includes an intervention by those closest to her.
“When it went off the rails, it went off the rails in a big way,” McBryde says on Bobby Bones’ BobbyCast podcast. “And as I’ve had to say over the past three years, I’m a drunk.” She goes on to say that, even though a lot of people have said they didn’t see her as much of a drinker, she was likely drunk when they were together, and for that, she is now full of regret.
“I am sorry,” McBryde says.
The Arkansas native spent time in an undisclosed rehab facility, which she admits was a challenge, and a big one.
“I kept being like, ‘I can’t do this. I don’t know where I am. Oh my God, I have to do this. … There’s no way I’m doing this for 30 days. That’s insane,'” McBryde recalls. “‘I don’t live under a bridge. I didn’t hurt anybody.’ And now I can hear my other self going, ‘Oh, kid. Sit down and shut up, and put your seatbelt on.'”
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Why Ashley McBryde Went to Rehab For Her Drinking
When Bones asks why McBryde stayed when she didn’t want to, her answer is direct and to the point.
“I was going to die,” McBryde maintains. “That’s the reason I had to go there, intervention style.”
“I woke up at another artist’s house, another female artist — and if I told you who, you would not be shocked, of course,” McBryde remembers. “And I woke up in a bed that’s not mine, in pajamas that aren’t mine. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, that must have been a doozy.’ I’m thirsty. I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know where water is, so I’ll just go find water.”
“And when I went to find water, I found a living room. In that living room was my team,” she continues, revealing that it was her close friend, hair and make-up artist Dayna Anne Slaughenhoupt, her manager, John Peets, and her day-to-day manager, along with the artist whose house she had just woken up in.
“I said, ‘Okay. I don’t know where my boots are, but I need my boots,'” McBryde remembers. “They said, ‘We need you to stop.’ And I said, ‘I need me to stop, too.’ And that was when I found out that she took me to her house that night, after we’d been out, to make sure I didn’t die. But I didn’t.”
In hindsight, McBryde feels profound gratitude for her friends who finally convinced her to get the help that she desperately needed, even if she was unaware of it at the time. She tears up talking about her friends having to deal with logisting, like buying her clothes so she had something to wear while she was getting treatment for her alcoholism, along with deciding who in her family to tell.
“I cannot fathom or make up for how much I put them through,” McBryde says. “That’s another reason to stay, is I didn’t die. And I have the chance right now. … I’m hurting me, and I’m hurting them. And if this goes any further, this is really, really ugly. This is like, they’ll have to make a movie about it bad. So I just buckled down and decided, ‘Well, I’m here. And technically I can leave, but we’re far enough out in the middle of nowhere that I wouldn’t know what direction to go. Hi, I’m Ashley. I’m evidently a drunk.'”
McBryde’s fifth studio album, Wild, will be out on May 8. The record includes “Bottle Tells Me So”, “Arkansas Mud”, her current “What If We Don’t” single, and more.
Photo Credit: CMA / Acacia Evans