Chris Stapleton Opens Up About Therapy, Sobriety, Kickstarting His Career

Chris Stapleton candidly spoke about going to therapy, his decision to stay sober, landing his “dream gig” in Nashville, Tennessee, and more. The powerhouse singer-songwriter spoke with GQ for the publication’s November issue. The interview published online on Tuesday (October 31).

The interview comes as Stapleton, 45, is about to release his next full-length album, Higher. The 14-track project includes previously-released “It Takes A Woman” and “White Horse.” It’s set to make its debut on November 10.

“It was a way to kind of help us navigate what the world was, what that meant to our family, to our business,” the country megastar said of therapy, which the Stapletons opted to start during the pandemic. He added during the interview of his sobriety: “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.’ …I like to tell people that I got into a drinking contest with myself in my 20s, and I lost. 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. 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.’”

Stapleton, from Kentucky, moved to Nashville when he was 23 years old, calling his songwriting gig a “golden job where someone would pay you to sit in a room and make up songs. …It was a dream gig.” Read his full interview here.