Ashley McBryde is celebrating four years of sobriety. The 42-year-old shares the good news on social media, revealing how she has managed to stay sober since 2022.
“Congratulations, me! 1,461 days of fighting for myself, showing up, doing the work and doing it scared most of the time,” McBryde writes. “For me, staying sober includes boxing, lifting and other ways of celebrating this body that carries me across the stage I live for. It includes being picky and intentional about who I spend energy on and with. And so much more.
“For you it may be totally different,” she continues. “Maybe you work a program, maybe you paint, maybe you do something totally ‘out-there’ to some people. Your path is yours. No one else needs to understand it. Whatever keeps you, YOU. You need you. Struggle forward. Do it scared.”
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What Ashley McBryde Says About Her Sobriety
McBryde waited almost a year before announcing that she had quietly quit drinking. After several people close to her had an intervention with McBryde, she went to rehab. It’s a decision that changed everything for her.
“When it went off the rails, it went off the rails in a big way. … I was going to die,” McBryde says on Bobby Bones’ BobbyCast podcast. “That’s the reason I had to go there, intervention style.”
McBryde left rehab and immediately went back on the road, opening for Dierks Bentley. She still remembers being afraid of performing for the first time without alcohol. But since McBryde cut alcohol from her life, she has a new clarity on her life, and an even bigger passion for becoming the best she can be in country music.
“It was the most terrifying, coolest experience. I wish I could go back and experience it again, because I was so shocked with the ease of everything I was doing,” she recounts on the Country Roads podcast. “My breath, I’m supported. My legs, moving across this stage just fine. My hands, not shaky. Who knew that would be handy?
“It was scary and amazing to go, ‘Look what you did,’” she remarks. “‘You went from embarrassing yourself to stealing the night, and you’ve only been without it for 30 days. Who knows what this is going to be like in 60 days?’”
Ashley McBryde’s New Album, ‘Wild’
McBryde’s latest album, Wild, is out now. The record includes “What If We Don’t,” her current hit single. But the entire project became fueled by an accident she had in 2021 that could have made her unable to perform ever again.
“I was really, really badly hurt, and it was a bad enough injury that there was a chance that I wouldn’t have been able to perform ever again,” McBryde recalls. “With that in mind, I thought, ‘Okay, then what if the songs that are in our live show, that aren’t on records, what if I keep letting them not be on records?
“What if something had happened, and now somebody never hears ‘Water in the River?’” she continues. “Somebody never hears ‘Rattlesnake Preacher.’ Somebody never hears ‘Creosote,’ because I let myself be discouraged in this way or that way from putting those on the record? So that’s what I wanted to start with.”
Photo Credit: CMA / Acacia Evans