/

January 12, 2025

3 DOORS DOWN’s BRAD ARNOLD On Getting Sober Nine Years Ago: These ‘Have Been The Best Years Of My Life’

3 DOORS DOWN singer Brad Arnold, who will celebrate the ninth anniversary of his getting sober on January 19, discussed his decision to quit drinking in a new interview with Allen Jackson Ministries. The 46-year-old musician said in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I started drinking down in Mississippi when I was a teenager with all my friends, like teenagers do. And we got signed when I was 20 years old and I stepped on a tour bus when I was 20 years old and started touring the world… It was just a lot to hand to a 20-year-old. And we’d done okay. And there was no catastrophe in my life that pushed me to drinking so much. It was just kind of the lifestyle. And whether it just be nerves going on stage or just not being able to sleep in a bus, the lifestyle just led me further and further down the road before I realized that I was drinking pretty heavily. And things in my life did start to suffer from it substantially. And there became a point in my life that, almost 95 percent of the problems, I could point to that bottle and that was the source. And my mom had prayed for me to quit, my brothers and sisters had prayed for me to quit, ’cause they’d seen the road I was going down. And I have two brother-in-laws that are pastors, so there was a lot of prayers being said for me, and I’m thankful for every one of ’em.”He continued: “I was in Japan one day, and we were playing the show for the troops, and I could feel myself slipping away, that it wasn’t me anymore. And I could also feel that this wasn’t gonna last a lot longer. And I tried to call a friend, and I tried to call a friend and look for somebody, I guess just to okay it or whatever, to validate my feelings, and I couldn’t get anyone on the phone. And I FaceTimed [legendary country musician] Mr. Charlie [Daniels], and he and his wife were sitting there on the couch, and it was late at night [in Japan] and it was about mid-morning maybe here, or however the time worked out — it was a big time difference — and I was sitting there just sobbing and just telling him how unhappy I was in my life. And he was a great counsel to me before this time. He always had great advice to tell me. He said, ‘Son,’ he said, ‘If you love your wife and you love God, like you say you do, you need to come home and you need to go rehab.’ He said, ‘There’s a good place in north Nashville there, Cumberland Heights, and you need to come on back home and it’s about getting in there.’ And I was, like, ‘Well, I’ll do that.’ And I would like to say that I got off the phone and called my wife and said, ‘Baby, I’m gonna go to rehab.’ I called her. I was, like, ‘Well, I’m going to rehab. I guess that makes you happy.’ But nonetheless, I came home and I went. And I was ready for it. I was willing for it, and I was open to it. And I went in there like I was going to learn something. And we were working the steps and all those things. And I honestly forgot what step it was. But there was a man that came in there to kind of hear your kind of talk and hear you pour your heart out. And he asked me, he said, ‘Brad, do you love God?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir. I love God.’ He said, ‘Why are you serving yourself?’ He said, ‘You’re not serving God with this.’ He said, ‘You’re serving yourself.’ It hit me hard. And he said, ‘Do you love your wife?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir. Of course. I love my wife.’ He said, ‘Well, then why are you trying to kill her husband?’ And it hit me between the eyes.”Arnold went on to say that the last nine years without alcohol “have been the best years of my life.”In a 2023 interview with Charleston.com, Arnold said that alcohol became habit forming and a crutch. “I used to think it was a way to calm myself prior to a show or to chase loneliness,” he explained. “There’s not one aspect of my life that isn’t better due to my sobriety. Honestly I still get a bit nervous just before I go on stage, but I don’t need alcohol to lean on.”Back in 2018, Brad told New Hampshire Union Leader about his decision to stop drinking: “The biggest thing about it was I could trace almost every problem in my life to alcohol, even while I was drinking. I got to a point that I knew that I was drinking too much, and I needed to stop. And our guitar player — he’s in recovery, and he’d been through his own addictions, and Greg [Upchurch], our drummer, had been through alcohol [problems] as well. I’m sitting [there] miserable all the time and feeling like crap all day, every day, until I started drinking earlier and earlier.”I’ve seen these guys, how much happier they were, and seeing all my problems. And I just wanted that happiness. We went on a tour over in Japan to play for the troops. I was about halfway through that week, and I couldn’t even remember this week. It wasn’t like I was just blacked-out drunk or did anything stupid. I just couldn’t even remember what I was doing. I just became so frustrated, and I knew I had a moment. I was like, ‘I have to stop this.'”Asked if he noticed a difference in his creativity between being sober and drinking, Brad said: “Absolutely. [Before] I’d go to band practice or something and I’d be like, ‘Well, you know I just need a drink to like loosen up, relax.’ But it was a killer vicious cycle, because it’s like my mind is lying to me. I thought I needed that to relax and be creative. But I can have one or two drinks, and the creativity was gone. It was like, ‘Well, I ain’t doing it today.’ That’s how it went so many times, and that same mindset translated to everything else in my life. It developed to the point that I thought I had this hole in my life that alcohol was covering up or filling in, when in reality, alcohol was digging that hole.”Arnold revealed that there was alcoholism in his family, saying: “At that time I was 36 or 37, and my daddy was 74 — and my daddy has two brothers that both died from alcohol. My dad didn’t drink, and my daddy has long outlived his brothers. And so I just thought to myself, ‘My daddy is twice my age, and I won’t live to be my dad’s age. If I continue to drink like this, then my life is more than halfway over.’ And I don’t want my life to be halfway over right now.”Formed in 1995, 3 DOORS DOWN’s many accolades include selling 16 million albums globally, receiving three Grammy nominations, and winning two American Music Awards, and five BMI Pop Awards for songwriting — including “Songwriter of the Year”. Their debut, “The Better Life”, became certified six times RIAA platinum in 2000 and was fueled by the success of juggernaut hit “Kryptonite”. This was followed by 2002’s sophomore album, “Away From The Sun”, which went triple platinum and saw similar success with “When I’m Gone” and “Here Without You”. 2005’s platinum “Seventeen Days” and 2008’s “3 Doors Down” each earned No. 1 debuts on the Billboard Top 200, while “Time Of My Life” landed at No. 3 in 2011. In 2003, the group founded the charity The Better Life Foundation. In 2016, 3 DOORS DOWN released its sixth full-length album, “Us And The Night”.[embedded content]