Brantley Gilbert Opens Up About Life as a Recovered Addict

Brantley Gilbert almost didn’t live to experience his lifelong dream of having a career in country music. The singer-songwriter had a drug and alcohol addiction so strong, it nearly killed him – twice.

Gilbert suffered a near-fatal car accident when he was 19, following a night of partying, which left him with some permanent memory damage. But it wasn’t until several years later, in 2011, when Gilbert was hospitalized for pancreatitis, and told he wouldn’t live to see his next birthday if he didn’t get sober, that he finally realized he would need professional help if he wanted to get, and stay, sober.

“I got to the point where I knew it was something I couldn’t do on my own,” Gilbert tells People. “Pissed me off to no end and embarrassed me. I’m a pretty strong-willed person but [sobriety] was the one thing in my life that I couldn’t get to stick.”

It wasn’t that Gilbert spent his days at the bar. By the time of his hospitalization, he had already written “Dirt Road Anthem” and “My Kinda Party” for Jason Aldean, and was earning attention as both a songwriter and a singer.

“I was fully functioning — I wrote more songs then than I do now,” says Gilbert. “That was the scary part.”

But while he was pounding out hits, he was carrying a laptop bag with him that held bottles of Jagermeister or vodka, along with pills.

“Every hour and a half to two hours it’d be time to get two or three good pulls on the bottle,” Gilbert recalls. “And every three or four hours it’s time for a pill or two.”

It wasn’t until Gilbert went out one night and woke up the next day not knowing where he was or how to get home that he finally had the wake-up call he desperately needed.

“That was one of the first times I got real with myself,” shares Gilbert. “I said, ‘Look this is a problem, man, this isn’t a once every other weekend thing.’ But you try to Band-Aid it. You say, ‘Well if I can cut down a little bit, and just do it like everybody else does, it’d be fine.’”

After the pancreatitis diagnosis, Gilbert started trying to get sober on his own, but wasn’t able to maintain a different way of living for very long.

“I still put it off and was trying to slow down on my own, like, ‘All right I’m only gonna let myself take two pills today. I’m only gonna drink this much of my bottle and make a mark on the bottle.’ And it would work a couple days — and then somebody throws a party.”

After partying hard when “Countrywide” went No. 1, Gilbert had his last drink on Dec. 18, 2011, and entered a treatment facility, spending Christmas in rehab.

“I was building a house at the time and I remember calling my manager and going, ‘Hey man are they pouring concrete for my house today? Tell them to stop. I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to afford this house,” Gilbert recounts. “I don’t know if I can play a show. Just the thought of being on an airplane is freaking me out.’ I didn’t remember the last time I had written a song without a bunch of liquor and stuff in me. It was terrifying.”

The Georgia native was ready to give up when he received a visit from fellow recovering addict, Keith Urban.

“[It was] one of the best things that could have happened to me in my life,” Gilbert says. “I remember him telling me, ‘Hey man, it’s gonna be scary, it’s gonna freak you out, but it’s gonna be beautiful.’ That was the opposite of the way I felt, and it that gave me that extra kick to go, ‘I can do this.’”

Now sober, and happily married to Amber Cochran, and the proud father of four-month-old son Barrett, Gilbert has a hard time even remembering who he used to be.

“Knowing where I am now, looking back almost makes me sick to my stomach,” he says. “To go back to that frame of mind now is hard. Just what the hell was I thinking?”

Gilbert is currently on his The Ones That Like Me Tour. Dates can be found on his website.

Photo Credit: Instagram/brantleygilbert