Jamey Johnson Talks His Amazing Life Improvements Since Getting Sober: “I Owed Myself a Better Way to Live”

It has been 14 years since Jamey Johnson released his last album The Guitar Song in 2010. However, that doesn’t mean the singer/songwriter hasn’t been busy. Johnson has been touring almost nonstop since his last album dropped. More than that, he’s been working to improve himself and his health. For instance, he walked away from booze since his last album dropped. This Friday (November 8), he’ll release Midnight Gasoline, his first new album in more than a decade and his first as a sober artist.

Johnson started releasing tracks from Midnight Gasoline earlier this year. “Sober” was among the first tracks he shared. Co-written with James Slater, the song is a frank look at Johnson’s sobriety and how hard it is to stay on the wagon as a country singer. He talked about the song and his recovery in a recent interview with Billboard.

[RELATED: Exclusive: Jamey Johnson Teams With Artist Friends Chris Stapleton, Randy Houser, Ernest for First Album in 14 Years]

Jamey Johnson Discusses His Sobriety

During the interview, Jamey Johnson revealed how long he has been sober and how it changed his life. “I had my last drink in September 2011. Then, I quit smoking pot in 2015. I think that lasted about eight years, nine years,” he explained. “With a sober mind I’m able to do things like get a pilot’s license, manage a business, start a product line,” he added.

While Johnson is alcohol-free, he says he still indulges in the Devil’s lettuce from time to time. “I’m sober for the most part, but every now and then, I may still break out a joint if I’m writing or something like that,” he revealed. “I don’t play games with the alcohol,” he added. “That’s what led me down a dark path of self-destruction back then and I barely survived.”

Then, Johnson talked about how alcohol impacted his life. “Alcohol was an incendiary way of destructing myself. Everything just went up in flames and you couldn’t put the fire out, you just had to wait for it to all come to ashes and then try to rebuild when you got done,” he recalled. “It seemed to me like I owed myself a better way to live than that.”

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