Keith Urban is getting honest about his sobriety. Urban reveals he knew for a while he needed to quit, but it took his wife, Nicole Kidman, to make it happen.

“All through the years of drinking, doing drugs, all the rest of it, I always had this very specific voice inside of me that goes, ‘One day, you’re going to come to a crossroads or a fork in the road, and it will be the final one,'” Urban tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “You’re either going to choose to get out of the sh–, or you’re never going to get out of it. That day is going to come. And it won’t be like, ‘Well, if you mess it up this time, there will be a next time.’ There won’t be a next time. And you’ll know when it comes.’ This went on for years. And in 2006, when that happened, and my wife called an intervention on me, I knew that was it. I’m like, ‘Oh. This is that fork in the road. Here it is.'”

Urban was newly married when Kidman staged the intervention. Although he admits he had tried unsuccessfully a few times to get sober, it wasn’t until Kidman that he finally realized he needed to make the life-altering decision.

“I didn’t come to America for that,” Urban reflects. “I came to America to make music and record and tour, and grow as an artist and as a human being. I didn’t come to America to end up in rehab and courthouses. That’s not why I came here. So I’m like, ‘What am I doing?’ But it took a few shots.”

Alcoholism and addiction sadly run in Urban’s family. The New Zealand native grew up with an alcoholic father, something he addresses head-on in “Break the Chain” in his most recent HIGH album.

“What helped me most in recovery was being able to separate the addict from the person,” Urban tells Addict with Purpose. “And my dad as a person was amazing. But he was an addict. So his addict was not nice, not good, not a good way to be raised.”

Urban wrote “Break the Chain” with Marc Scibilia, an emotional moment for Urban, who addressed his father’s shortcomings directly in the lyrics on “Break the Chain.”

“I went and sat on his couch, and I got a legal pad out cause I like to write, and I’m writing,” Urban remembers. “I  get to this second verse, and I just start weeping on this guy’s couch, just crying on this guy’s couch, who I’ve just met. He looks over at me and he goes, ‘Must be true.’ And then went right back to work. And it was the perfect reaction, because it let me stay in the place I was at with no judgment, and I could finish the song. And then I got on the mic and I sang it top to bottom and then did some harmonies and everything just went quickly.

“I didn’t second guess it,” he continues. “I just did it. He sent me the track the next day, pieced together, and I just said, ‘I think we should leave this one alone. I think this is real. I’m not going to go and track it with the band on a proper session and all this BS. We’re just going to leave it like that.’”

When Urban was at the height of his addiction, he could not see what he sees now, that his father’s addiction directly impacted him.

“My dad was an alcoholic,” Urban tells EMi Music Australia. “So I’m raised in an alcoholic house with all the stuff that comes with that. And I love my dad; I love my family. But it was a challenging environment to be in, and not something I realized until I was much older, and I’d left home. I realized I’m carrying around the same kinds of ways of being, because it works in that environment. Suddenly I’m out in the world, I’m not in that environment, but I’m still doing the same things, and wondering why everything is just off. And then of course I find out that I’m alcoholically wired, just like my dad. Took me years to see that.”

Urban just launched his High and Alive World Tour. Find all of his music and upcoming shows at KeithUrban.com.