Powerful stuff. The “girl goin’ nowhere” herself, Ashley McBryde, has hardly lived up to her self-proclaimed nickname over the past few years. After breaking out with Eric Church back in 2017 with her performance of “Bible and A .44,” the Arkansas native has become one of the premier female artists in the genre, scoring a Grammy win for Best Country Duo/Group Performance (“Never Wanted to Be That Girl”) along with multiple ACM and CMA Award wins. Despite all the success, along with being one of the most well-respected artists in the genre as of late, it hasn’t come easy for the Arkansas native. Over the years, she’s been incredibly transparent with her struggle with alcohol addiction and her decision to get sober. In addition to some moving songs about sobriety, “The Devil I Know” and “Blackout Betty,” she’s been incredibly transparent about her relationship with alcohol over the years. In an interview with Kelleigh Bannen on Today’s Country Radio back in 2023, McBryde noted that she was over a year sober at the time because she didn’t want to speak on the topic and then go and “screw it up.” Since being sober, McBryde realized that her drinking was becoming very “detrimental” to her well-being, and her drinking kept her from fully feeling the emotions in her heart and mind. “Turns out it was just really detrimental. And then when you’re finding out the reasons that you’re going so overboard all the time was because of your inability to feel something that your brain was like, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I’m like, well, that’s weak. I’m not going to accept that. I’d rather just hurt. This morning, I was at the boxing gym working out with my coach. We were doing something that was hard, and he said, ‘Are you okay? Do you need a break?’ And I said, ‘I know how to hurt.’ I do now. I mean, I knew how to hurt before and add extra to it for no reason.” Though she has always been open about her sobriety journey, McBryde had never truly opened up about all the details surrounding her final decision to get sober. With that being said, however, she recently revealed all the details in a recent interview with Bobby Bones on Bobbycast… and it was powerful, to say the least. During the interview, she’d reveal that she ended up checking into rehab in 2022, which led to her current sobriety. Bluntly, she’d note how she didn’t think she had to go, given her success in the industry, something that she wholeheartedly rejects today. “I kept being like, ‘I can’t do this. I don’t know where I am.’ [to] ‘Oh my God, I have to do this. I mean, I’m gonna do it. They got me here. I’m gonna do it. But I kept being like, ‘No way am I doing this for 30 days. That’s insane. I don’t live under a bridge. I didn’t hurt anybody.  Now I can hear my other self going, ‘Oh kid, sit down and shut up and put your seatbelt on.” On the topic of why she stayed in rehab after being so hesitant, McBryde didn’t hold any punches, saying how she would have killed herself if she continued the path she was on before making the decision: “I was gonna die. That’s the reason I had to go there, intervention style.” She’d then go on to explain the harrowing moment that made her realize she had a problem. As she recalls, she woke up one night at another female artist’s house, not knowing what had happened the night before. Trying to get some water, she was met with the said artist along with her entire team. “I woke up at another artist’s house, another female artist… I woke up in a bed that was not mine, in pajamas that aren’t mine. And I was like, ‘That must’ve been a doozy, I’m thirsty.’ I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know where water is. So I’ll just go find water.  And when I went to find water, I found a living room, and in that living room was my team… I looked at them and that artist [who] was also on the couch, and I said, ‘Okay, I don’t know where my boots are, but I need my boots.'” Tearfully, she’d then recall that her team sat down, intervention style, and asked her to quit. During the conversation, which eventually led to her checking in to seek help, they’d let McBryde know that the reason she ended up in the unnamed artist’s house was that she thought she was going to die from alcohol poisoning that night. “They said, ‘We need you to stop.’ And I said, ‘I need me to stop, too.’ And that’s when I found out that she took me to her house that night after we’d been out to make sure I didn’t die. But I didn’t.” McBryde would then reflect on the aftermath of her decision. Noting how much her hair/makeup stylist, Dayna Anne Slaughenhoupt, and her stylist, Blakely Collier, did for her, she’d admit that there’s nothing she can do to make up for the grace and support they showed her during that incredibly vulnerable moment in her life. “When I think about Dana and Blakely having to go shopping to find me clothes and having to go through my stuff, and to decide whether to tell my family, I cannot fathom or make up for how much I put them through.” Touching on why she decided to stay in more detail, she’d once again bluntly admit just how bad her relationship with alcohol was, saying it was “they’ll have to make a movie about it” bad. “That’s another reason to stay [in rehab]. I didn’t die, and I have the chance right now. [It’s like], ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m hurting me, whatever, and I’m hurting them. And if this goes any further, this is really, really ugly. This is like, ‘they’ll have to make a movie about it’ bad. So I just buckled down and decided, ‘Well, I’m here, and technically I can leave, but we’re far enough out in the sticks that I wouldn’t know what direction to go.” I’ll admit, many articles in this industry are fairly easy to cover. It’s pretty easy to write about a song or album release, a brand new tour or a new record set by whichever artist is currently trending. This one, however, was a difficult one. It’s not often you see an artist such as McBryde be this transparent about her personal struggles, let alone reveal so many details about something as vulnerable as going to rehab. If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction, I cannot recommend listening to her entire interview on the subject. Simply put, it’s powerful. You can watch McBryde’s entire episode of Bobbycast on Netflix, which is available to stream now. “The Devil I Know” Redemption Residency Dates March 19 & 20 – Just Me and My Shadow April 17 & 18 – Mixtape from the Mixed Up YearsThe post “I Was Gonna Die”: Ashley McBryde Tearfully Recalls The Day She Decided To Go To Rehab first appeared on Whiskey Riff.