'Got into a drinking contest with myself': Chris Stapleton fought alcohol struggle without going to rehab

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Chris Stapleton claims he was able to get back on track without the need for rehabilitation for his drinking problem. Following years of struggling with alcohol abuse, the country singer talked candidly about his journey to sobriety in a recent interview.

He said, "I didn’t have to go to rehab, but from a 45-year-old-man health perspective, a doctor’s gonna look at me and go, ‘Hey, man, probably cut out the drinking,’ and I’d be like, ‘Okay, cool.'"

Chris Stapleton 'got into a drinking contest' with himself

Following years of sobriety, the celebrity's pre-show routine now begins with vocal exercises instead of a tequila shot.

He said, "I like to tell people that I got into a drinking contest with myself in my 20s, and I lost."

He added, "When you’re younger, you feel like you have to do certain things in order to occupy some of these spaces, to make yourself feel like you’re legit. You want to feel things. You want to be able to write about things authentically."

To elaborate on the myth that musicians who are battling addiction produce better music, Stapleton said, "If somebody working a different kind of job drank themselves to death in the name of being better at that job, it wouldn’t make sense to anybody. We wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, he must have been the greatest electrician who ever lived," as reported by Okmagazine.

 Chris Stapleton gushes about his wife Morgane

In addition to discussing his substance abuse, Stapleton also described how therapy helped him and his wife, Morgane, resolve their problems.

Speaking about the encounter, he gushed about his sweetheart, describing her as the "barometer on songs." He said, "It was a way to kind of help us navigate what the world was, what that meant to our family, to our business."

He said, "Even if your wife wasn’t heavily involved in your career, if you’re happily married and you want to stay that way, you don’t want to sing things that your wife hates."

 Chris Stapleton was not always a music enthusiast

Stapleton mentioned in the interview that he wasn't always a music enthusiast.

He described how he excelled in football, baseball, and basketball while in high school and later decided to major in engineering. But once he got to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend Vanderbilt, he became enthralled with the center of the country music scene.

He said, “The notion of writing songs was not foreign to me. What was foreign to me was learning that when George Strait sang a song, he didn’t necessarily write it."

He added, “When I found out that there was this golden job where someone would pay you to sit in a room and make up songs…I thought, Man, that’s the greatest job in the world.”