Tim McGraw quit drinking quite a few years ago, but the country superstar didn’t just give up alcohol — he did it on the very first day of a major tour.
McGraw told Oprah Winfrey that he quit drinking on the actual day that he launched his Live Your Voice tour, which kicked off May 30, 2008.
“It got to the point where I knew I drank too much,” he said in an interview. “I knew it was affecting my personal relationships. It was affecting my professional relationships. It was affecting my family. It was turning me into a person that I didn’t want to be. I knew I was at a point where I could lose everything in my life. First and foremost, my family.”
McGraw admitted that it wasn’t easy at first to go out in front of fans without a little liquid courage.
“I had a complete blow-out drinking one night, the night before the tour started,” he recalled. “Flew to Florida that morning, from being wasted the night before, and started that tour, and haven’t drank since. That was the toughest tour I’ve ever done in my life, to get through that tour not drinking. I’d never done it before. I’d never done a show — I could probably count on one hand the times I’d stepped on stage if I didn’t have alcohol in me, or something. That was the toughest thing about quitting.”
McGraw has since replaced those habits with a healthy lifestyle regimen that includes working out very strenuously, and he regularly talks openly about how sobriety has changed his life.
