Ashley McBryde is opening up about taking care of her mental health. As McBryde prepares to release her Wild. album on Friday, May 8, she says she is active in therapy, encouraging others to do the same.
“Therapy plays a really big role in my life,” the 42-year-old says. “Whether it was helping my path to sobriety, or to keep me on the right path, it’s really helped me out. And I think it’s important, number one, be honest about how I’m getting through being in my 40s, and learning about myself. And two, to encourage others to grab things like that with both hands, and learn more about themselves.”
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What Ashley McBryde Says About Sobriety
McBryde got sober in 2022, waiting almost a year to announce that she quit drinking. She recently revealed the moment when she realized her drinking was out of control.
“I woke up at another artist’s house, another female artist, in a bed that’s not mine, in pajamas that aren’t mine,” McBryde recounts on Bobbycast. “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.”
“When I went to find water, I found a living room,” she continues. “In that living room was my team. And 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.”
Ashley McBryde’s New ‘Wild’ Album
Wild is McBryde’s fifth studio album, and also her most personal. The record includes her current single, “What If We Don’t,” plus “Arkansas Mud,” “Hand Me Downs,” “Bottle Tells Me So,” and more.
“Looking at the vinyl track listing, it describes the spirit, the first half of the record,” McBryde says. “It describes the kind of fear that comes along with recognizing that I’m about to start talking about my alcoholism. It represents the chaos of recognizing relationship problems and where they came from, what was modeled for me, how I let it shape me, and most importantly, little me sitting on the floor, dreaming up what I would be like when I got older.”
The Story Behind Ashley McBryde’s Current “What If We Don’t” Single
McBryde wrote “What If We Don’t” with Terri Jo Box and Randall Clay. The song says in part, “What if we don’t? What if we don’t? / What if we stop fighting what we know we both want? / We might regret how far we let it go / What if we don’t?”
“For me, this song brings about being at peace with answers you’ll never get,” McBryde says. “And whether you chose to do this or that, the other decision, the one that you didn’t make, you still live with those consequences. Things that hurt don’t just stay. Things that hurt turn into a lyric. The lyric turns into a melody. The melody turns into a song. The song goes on a record. And now, we have created a bridge from hurt to heal. And it did it for us to write it, and it did it for us as a band to record it. And now it gets to do that for other people when they listen to it.”