Ashley McBryde, by her own admission, spent a lot of her career hiding the fact that she was drunk while on stage. It all came to a screeching halt in 2022, when McBryde went to rehab, at the suggestion of some people on her team. McBryde put her life and career on hold to do the hard work, emerging a stronger, sober version of herself, something that she admits was initially terrifying for her.
“When I left treatment, or that I lovingly call trauma camp, I left Tuesday at lunch, back to Nashville by that evening,” McBryde recalls on the Country Roads podcdast. “Wednesday, I get on the bus. Thursday, I’m back on stage. This is the first time I have been longer than 30 days without alcohol, and I had to go do a show. I was out opening for Dierks Bentley at the time.”
Although she couldn’t have known it at the beginning of her first sober show, the entire evening was eye-opening for the singer.
“‘What do I do? How do I walk? I don’t even know how to sit in a chair without being drunk,'” McBryde remembers thinking. “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. 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 adds. “‘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 Opens Up About “Bottle Tells Me So” From Her New ‘Wild’ Album
Included on McBryde’s latest Wild album is “Bottle Tells Me So,” a song that McBryde wrote with Shelly Fairchild and Terri Jo Box about her alcoholism. The song says in part, “One of us is gonna break one of these days / If this ain’t bottom, it’s as far down as I ever wanna go / The party’s over and as always, I’m the last one to know / For the bottle tells me so / Neither one of us got this empty on our own / For the bottle tells me so / The bottle tells me so.” She admits it is one of the most vulnerable songs she has ever released.
“Especially since it’s not saying, ‘I don’t drink, and neither should you,'” McBryde reflects. “I don’t care if you drink. It was a moment I lived a lot of times. And I think being in a place now where I can have compassion for that, instead of just kicking my own a– all the time, to say things like, ‘Neither one of us got this empty on our own.’ It’s not letting anybody off the hook, and it’s not demanding change right away. It’s just acknowledging, hey, this is a problem, and it’s getting expensive, and not just at the bank. And waking up to a house that’s a disaster, and then realizing that you’ve been home by yourself all evening.
“Quit drinking or don’t. Nobody cares, really.,” she continues. “Die or don’t. Nobody cares. But stop making it everyone else’s problem. At least look at yourself and say, ‘This is costing me more than it’s giving me.’ And hopefully, it gives someone else the ability to avoid sitting in that situation, or the ability to sit in that situation, and be like, ‘This is where I am. I don’t have to stay here. I got her. I wasn’t here, and now I am. There’s also a possibility that tomorrow, I am not still here. This can be a passage.'”
Photo Credit: Nathan Chapman