Country music has a lot of songs about drinking and partying, but for numerous artists, they might sing about alcohol, but they choose not to imbibe. We found 17 country music artists who, due to former addictions, health issues or just personal beliefs, are completely sober.
1. Tim McGraw
Tim McGraw gave up drinking thanks in large part to his wife, Faith Hill, who supported and encouraged him when he needed it the most.
“I remember a moment when I was getting out of bed and going to the liquor cabinet and taking a big shot at 8:00 in the morning and thinking, ‘I have to wake the kids up,’” McGraw recalled to Esquire. “I went straight to my wife and said, ‘This is where I’m at.’ I was scared. She just grabbed me and hugged me and changed my life.”
2. Keith Urban
Keith Urban had a few attempts at sobriety before he finally got clean for good in 2006, only four months after he wed Nicole Kidman, at the encouragement of his new bride.
“I caused the implosion of my fresh marriage,” Urban later said (via The Fix). “It survived, but it’s a miracle it did. I was spiritually awoken with her. And for the first time in my life, I could shake off the shackles of addiction.”
On October 19, 2006, Urban entered the Betty Ford Center to overcome his addictions, once and for all.
3. Brantley Gilbert
Brantley Gilbert has Urban at least to partially thank for his sobriety. Brantley, like Urban, previously had a few attempts at rehab, before his final one, at Cumberland Heights in Nashville, where he was visited by the country music superstar.
“I told him, I don’t think I can do my job,'” Gilbert recalled to The Tennessean. “I don’t know if I can ever play a song at my shows without being (messed) up. Or writing, I was worried my songs wouldn’t be the same, that I wouldn’t be on everyone else’s level.”
Although Urban has not publicly commented on their visit, Gilbert recalls Urban telling him he had the same fears, but found he performed better when he wasn’t under the influence.
4. Trace Adkins
Trace Adkins also had a couple of stints in rehab, both in 2001 and 2014, and now insists he is done drinking, for good.
“It’s an extra challenge that’s put in your way, but it can be overcome,” Adkins told WBIR, adding that if he can get help, anyone can.
“You feel very lonely at first until you find out there’s a whole lot of people in the exact same boat you’re in,” he said.
5. Joe Don Rooney
Rascal Flatts‘ Joe Don Rooney revealed in early 2024 that he got sober in 2021, after a life-altering car accident.
“My life and career took a major detour at 4:00 AM in the early morning hours of Sept. 9, 2021 when I ran square into a tree and about killed myself,” Rooney shared on social media. “I was drunk and I was so far gone with my life – I was completely out of control and finished with trying to fight the fears, depression and anxieties that had spun me out in a way I’ve never experienced before.
“My drinking had been an issue for many years – and as they say in AA and treatment, it’s a progressive disease,” he continued. “I am living proof that the progressive nature of drinking can really ratchet up and as I grew older as an adult my drinking grew worse.”
The accident was the wake-up call Rooney needed, which is what made him commit to going to rehab.
“Fortunately, (and I truly believe this,) God led me into that tree safely enough to not kill me – and luckily nobody else was involved and I didn’t injure or kill anyone,” Rooney said. “I could literally be in a Federal Prison for life right now. That is the reality of what my life had become. That event led me to treatment for my alcoholism for four months in the beautiful mountains of Utah.”
On September 13, 2024, Rooney celebrated three years of sobriety.
6. Steve Earle
Steve Earle had a long struggle with sobriety, before finally getting clean in the ’90s. But before he gave up drugs and alcohol for good, he had reached rock bottom, revealing to The Guardian that he was homeless for two years, living on the streets and spending up to $1000 a day to buy drugs.
“In the end, I just gave up on heroin because I wasn’t getting that high so I went on the methadone program and started smoking cocaine,” Earle recalled. “I hate cocaine, I prefer heroin and opiates, but it was like being a monkey and you just conditioned yourself to push the button. You don’t care whether you get a shot or a banana peel, you just want something to happen to change the way you feel.”
Earle served 60 days in jail for weapons and drug possession in 1994. Sadly, his son, Justin Townes Earle, passed away in 2020, with multiple reports suggesting it was likely a drug overdose.
7. Jo Dee Messina
Jo Dee Messina went to rehab in 2004, after a less-than-stellar performance at a party after the Super Bowl. She entered a rehab facility in Utah, and spoke candidly about her addiction to alcohol after her recovery, and the message she now wants to share with others.
“I want them to know that they’re not alone, because the scariest thing for an addict is they feel very alone and isolated in their feelings,” Messina said (via AngelFire.com). “Being an alcoholic has a stigma to it. To be a woman and an alcoholic – oh, my gosh, the stigma’s even larger. It’s even more of a sin [than for a man]. I’ve never known a woman in the entertainment industry to have a problem and come out unscathed. But that’s a chance I have to take.”
8. Jason Isbell
Jason Isbell might not be sober, if not for his former wife, singer-songwriter Amanda Shires, who became the motivation he needed.
“The catalyst was Amanda Shires, who’s my wife now,” Isbell told GQ in 2019. “I was trying to establish a long-term relationship with her, and it became pretty clear to me that she wasn’t going to be in a long-term relationship with a drunk. So that was my first real motivation to get sober. I don’t think I would have done it— I certainly wouldn’t have done it at that point — if it hadn’t been for her.”
9. Walker Hayes
Walker Hayes has been sober since 2016, when his life seemed to be falling apart. After losing more than one record deal, and barely able to make ends meet and support his growing family, Hayes still vividly recalls when he realized his drinking days were over.
“I was working at Costco, and I knew I had a problem, but my fear was, ‘How will I function sober? How am I gonna be a dad, a husband, an artist?'” Hayes told CMT. “When those anxieties crept up on me, I wouldn’t be able to drink them away anymore. But one Saturday, my body just kind of rejected alcohol. I just didn’t drink. It was the first day I hadn’t been drinking in four years, I’m sad to say. But then one day turned into two and so on. I was so high on sobriety for about a week. You feel so fresh and new for a second because I’d been drunk for four years. But then when a demon creeps in and you don’t have the alcohol Band-Aid to put on it, it was scary.”
10. Jake Owen
Jake Owen was sober for almost a year before he announced he had just accomplished 317 days of sobriety in 2022.
“317 days ago I embarrassed myself after drinking too much alcohol one night. It wasn’t the first time either,” Owen posted on social media at the time. “The next day I told myself, ‘never again.’ I am better than that, and the people I love the most deserve better. My family, my little girls, and my friends.
“Just wanted to share my journey in case anyone woke up this morning and wants to make a change,” he continued. “None of us [are] perfect… I’m just trying to be the best version of myself these days.”
On September 16, 2024, Owen revealed he was celebrating three years of sobriety.
“September 16th, 2021 was a pretty big day for me,” Owen said in a video. “Three years ago, I decided that was the day. And that was three years ago, today. 1,096 days ago. 36 months ago. It might honestly be one of the things that I’m most proud of that I’ve ever done in my entire life.”
11. Charles Kelley
Lady A made the difficult, but necessary, decision to postpone their Request Line Tour in 2022, so Charles Kelley could focus on getting sober. His decision came after he got in an argument with his wife, Cassie, while on vacation in Greece, which resulted in him turning off his phone, drinking all night, and scaring his family and friends. What could have been the end of his marriage, became the motivation for Kelley to make teh change he desperately needed to make.
“It makes me feel so grateful at how close I came to losing it all,” Kelley, who penned “As Far As You Could” as a goodbye to alcohol, told CBS This Morning. “I think the thing that’s hard is to know how much it affected Cassie the most, and my band, and the people around me, and how much it emotionally wrecked them for a while. I can’t really say I’m sorry enough. It’s just going to take time to rebuild that.”
12. Shay Mooney
Dan + Shay, made up of Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney, announced in 2023 that they had reconnected, after a four-month separation. Their time apart, and their decision to keep making music together, came as Mooney was also doing a lot of work on all aspects of himself, including his health.
“I kind of set out on this journey in a place where I was like, ‘Man, I’m tired of feeling horrible all the time,’” Mooney told People. “I was too tired and rundown mentally to play with my kids when I got off the road, or really just ever. It was all the time. I knew that that was because of my unhealthy eating habits and drinking too much.”
“I started eating super clean, whole foods and fasting, and I cut out alcohol and I haven’t looked back,” he added.
13. Ashley McBryde
Ashley McBryde went more than a year without drinking before she told anybody about her sobriety. The Arkansas native realized she was using alcohol to numb her feelings, and made the brave decision to face her emotions head-on instead of try to bury them by drinking.
“Turns out it was just really detrimental,” McBryde said on Apple Music Country’s Today’s Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen. “And then when you’re finding out the reasons that you’re going so overboard all the time was because of your inability to feel something that your brain was like, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t do it.’ I’m like, ‘Well, that’s weak. I’m not going to accept that. I’d rather just hurt.’ This morning I was at the boxing gym working out with my coach. We were doing something that was hard, and he said, ‘Are you okay? Do you need a break?’ And I said, ‘I know how to hurt.’
“I do now,” she added. “I mean, I knew how to hurt before and add extra to it for no reason. And now, when I’m uncomfortable, I say out loud, ‘I know how to be uncomfortable.’”
On Thanksgiving Day, McBryde celebrated her 900th day of sobriety.
14. Jon Pardi
Jon Pardi might be fairly new to sobriety, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t serious about it. The newest member of the Grand Ole Opry revealed in December of 2023 that he was celebrating 112 days of sobriety, after having concerns about his physical health.
“I was pre-diabetic and I was just like, I gotta stop,” Pardi said on Amazon Music’s Country Heat Weekly podcast (via Country Now). “But I will say I’m retired. Doesn’t mean I can’t come out of retirement, but for right now it’s been great.”
15, Joe Nichols
Joe Nichols became addicted to whiskey when he was just 13 years old, an addiction he fought until he entered rehab in October of 2007, one month after he married his wife, Heather, maintaining his sobriety in the years since then.
“I think once you have that ultimate humility, you’ve had enough of being humiliated,” Nichols reflected to Country Music Made Me. “I think your ego finally steps aside and says, for me anyway, it stepped aside and I said, ‘I’m not God, and I can’t do what I’ve been doing. I can’t be God. I think I’ll let God be God.’ And at that point, my ego has been different. My whole outlook on life is different. Honesty is different. I think that’s probably the biggest point that I can say. I really felt humbled.”
16. Whey Jennings
Whey Jennings got sober in 2020, no small feat since he had been fighting addiction for a long, long time.
“I was addicted to drugs and alcohol for about 27 years of my life. That’s a long time. It seems like it went by like that,” Jennings told Everything Nash, snapping his fingers. “I started at a young age. I’ve been asked earlier if it had something to do with my grandfather [Waylon Jennings], and I was like, ‘No. These are all decisions I made on my own, and I can’t put that on nobody but me.’ At a young age, I started hanging out with the wrong crowd. At that point in time, you’re a teenager, running around and having fun. It’s all fun and games.”
“You wake up one day and you’re an adult, and it’s not fun anymore,” he continues. “You’re trying to figure out how you’re gonna pay the bills, and supply a drug addiction. And then, on top of that, ten years later comes around, and the drugs that you thought weren’t going to kill you, now they’re putting stuff in them that can kill you dead. You watch your friends drop like flies. At that point, it’s not fun anymore.”
In 2020, Jennings entered rehab.
“I’m trying to be a good father now and be a good role model,” Jenning said, after completing 28 days.
17. Josh Turner
Josh Turner has never had a drink, not because of an addiction issue, but because of his strong Christian faith.
“I’ve never had a drink of alcohol in my life,” Turner told CBN. “I’ve never smoked a cigarette. That’s not to say I’m perfect. I’m not. I’m a sinner just like everybody else and I have my faults and I’ve been through my dark times in my life to where I wasn’t walking the walk and talking the talk, or I may have been talking the talk, but I wasn’t walking the walk.”
