Keith Urban Talks Sobriety, Nicole Kidman Staged Intervention

Keith Urban's new feature story with Rolling Stone magazine touches on several topics.

In the interview, which was published on Tuesday (November 2), the country titan reflected on his sobriety, admitting that he used his late father, Robert, as a barometer for his assessment. “It took me a long time to get sober,” he confessed to the music outlet. “Took me a long time to recognize my alcoholism. A long time because I didn’t drink like my dad, so I compared everything to him. So it just took a long time for me. But I was able to finally make the right choice in my life, that I wish my dad would have made."

As for the intervention that his wife Nicole Kidman staged prior to his 40th birthday in 2006, four months after their wedding, Urban kept his reflections on that moment short and sweet. "That's very personal," he replied when asked about that moment that led him to check into the Betty Ford Clinic. “It’s not an uncommon story,” he explained of dealing with personal struggles amid career success. “You know, the career’s on fire and the personal life is also on fire, completely in the wrong way. That was the case for me. I was a real binge drinker.”

Despite his candidness on the topic, Urban said he views his sobriety as a personal element to his story, but mostly wants his concert go-ers to feel the escapism of his shows and not engage in his past struggles. “The reason I don’t really talk much about sobriety is it’s a very personal thing and I don’t want anyone thinking that I have a negative opinion of drugs or alcohol,” he explained. “I don’t have any at all, none. I want people to come to my concert and do whatever the hell they want to do."