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Sometimes advice we give to others ends up revealing something about ourselves. During a writing session conversation with Laura Veltz and Jesse Jo Dillon about some struggles one of them was having, Ashley McBryde said, “You know that’s not even yours, right? They just handed it to you.” That moment led to “Hand Me Downs,” a track about generational trauma on McBryde’s latest album, Wild. On the latest episode of Going There with Dr. Mike, the country star and Grand Ole Opry member explains how the song has helped her “set certain things down” and how she’s learned to ask herself a simple question: “Is that mine?” Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts, and watch the full episode on YouTube.
Find Ashley McBryde Tickets Here
Through “massive amounts of therapy” and a stay at an inpatient trauma treatment center, McBryde says she learned which of her burdens she piled on herself and which were “gifted” to her by parents and grandparents. It was only after years into sobriety that she discovered addiction “ran rampant” in her family, as she’s the “granddaughter of, the sister of, the child of addict.” Reflecting on that knowledge, McBryde says, “If you could’ve told me that was one of the gifts that you gave me, then maybe I still would’ve drank – but at least I would’ve made an informed choice.”
Regardless, the decision to quit meant confronting her personal identity, one that had earned her a reputation as “being the badass that drinks all the time and doesn’t seem drunk,” McByrde says. “I’m just so good at being a drunk, and that’s gross.” Harder still, she felt her “entire career is based on getting other people to drink,” and she feared quitting would put that at risk. It took her years to break that notion and maintain her sobriety, and she’s blunt about how she views it now: “You do not have to drink yourself under a desk to be a songwriter,” she says. “That nasty, slobbery version of you that stumbles around on a stage, nobody’s buying a ticket to watch you be drunk… You don’t have to live like that. You don’t have to almost die.”
It took some time, but Ashley McBryde came to realize “maybe part of being the whiskey-drinking badass is knowing when to set it down. That’s badass.”
Listen to this power, candid conversation with Ashley McBryde on the latest Going There with Dr. Mike above, wherever you get your podcasts, or on YouTube. You can also catch McBryde on her “Into the Wild Tour” this fall by getting tickets here.
Coming from the Consequence Podcast Network, Season 7 of Going There is presented by Johnson & Johnson, who believes that health is everything. Their strength in healthcare innovation empowers them to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through their expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, they are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at www.jnj.com, and @JanssenUS and @JNJInnovMed on X.