Ian Flanigan is proudly sober, a battle that was hard-fought for him. It came after years of finding his music career intertwined with imbibing, working hard to successfully extricate the two from each other.
“This April, I’ll actually be eight years alcohol-free, and from any narcotics or anything,” Flanigan tells Everything Nash. “I started playing dive bars when I was 17, and I would get paid in liquor, and only paid in liquor in tips. So by the time I was 25, my self-worth in my musical career was equivalent to being paid a lot in booze and free food or something. I had created this really unhealthy standard of what I thought normal was. You want to be the best you can, so you gig every night, but then you’re also drinking hard every night until you’re drinking in the mornings.”
Flanigan had an unfortunate wake-up call one night, which made him realize that his drinking was keeping him from the thing he wanted most: a career in country music.
“I would take other things to keep going, and it really just spiraled into this self-analysis and realization that I’m destroying my life. I’m destroying my music career, I’m getting in more bar fights than I’m ever getting landing single deals,” the 33-year-old explains. “I got in a bad wreck one night, and I decided, ‘I need to focus on [music]. I got lucky. I’m gonna go check myself into a rehab.’ I went into this six-week rehab down in Florida, got clean for a while, relapsed a few times, and went back to a couple of detoxes.
“It just clicked one day, and I’ve just been off of it for eight years now,” he proudly adds. “But the main thing that really got me was my love of music. Wanting to make something good to leave behind and help other people became greater than my need to feel better.”
Flanigan, who came in third place on Season 19 of The Voice, on Blake Shelton‘s team, joins a long — and growing list — of singers who are sober, including Charles Kelley, Jake Owen, Walker Hayes, Tim McGraw and more who choose to avoid drinking. While the struggle was hard for Flanigan at first, he has since found a way to distance himself from drinking, allowing him to focus more on his music.
“I had a hard time the first year and then after that, I realized I’m just allergic. I’m allergic,” Flanigan says. “Some people eat peanuts and they go insane. I drink, and I end up not being who I want to be. Whether that’s in one night or over the course of a year, I’m not where I want to be. So it’s not hard anymore. And I think our community around sobriety is what keeps people going strong. So even if that’s one person — it doesn’t have to be like ten groups — but if I got one guy and he and I have been sober together the whole time … It’s hard to do it alone.
“It’s easy to do when you have help,” he adds. “It’s a part of the lifestyle and especially coming up when we all did, you are trying to create the party and it’s hard sometimes to have that energy when you’re not partaking along with the party. I think it can catch up to anybody. There’s nobody immune to it.”
Flanigan released “Grow Up,” his collaboration with Shelton last year. The song is from his 2022 Strong album. Find all of Flanigan’s music and upcoming shows at IanFlaniganMusic.com.
