Drinking

RT: Have you opened a bottle of Talisker lately?

JM: Yeah, I enjoy a little bit of scotch now and again. Scotch in good conversation.

PD: You recently said you were “entering cannabis life.” How is that working out?

JM: I put it where drinking used to go, and the quality of life has gone up considerably. Drinking is a fucking con. How much is enough? Every time I drank, I was looking for some sort of regulated amount. It always feels wrong for me. I always feel like I went overboard. “I said two, now it’s three, now we’re at four?” I never had a serious issue with it, but I remember looking around going, “This feels rigged. I’m taking a break. There’s never an amount that felt like I was succeeding at life. It always felt wrong.

BB: Why’d you quit drinking?

JM: Two things. Voice. And I knew that if I didn’t want to cancel shows—for either health or mental health—that I was going to have to be excited every time I woke up, to be honest with you. And I’d have to be fully portable as a human being. And we’ve all been hungover on an airplane. Those are long flights. Those are long sweaty, trembly flights. So, I wake up in the morning and I’m ready to go. I’m psyched.

I don't drink, as I referenced a couple of days ago, which was interesting, man. It was interesting to put that out into the world and feel what happened to it. There's a lot of thought around drinking. There's a lot of individualized thought around drinking. There's a lot of personal feeling about drinking. I certainly didn't explain everything about how I feel about it, but it was interesting to see it trigger a lot of people's thoughts and emotions. I would be lying if I said that I didn't feel some sense of comfort in seeing so many other people say that they had stopped drinking as well. I think I have, probably, a resistance to some of the vocabulary around it. I like the idea that it's a break. For me, personally, I just have my own way through it in my mind. If I even explained it, I think other people would say, that makes no sense. It's just so personal. I look at it again, like, I just happen not to be drinking at this point in my life.

Here's the thing. For me, and I'm lucky that I don't have the gene of alcoholism. Which, really, that's the first thing you have to be grateful for, if you're lucky enough not to have the gene. What you need to understand is, so much of drinking is a socially-applied thing. Drinking gets a lot of its life from everybody pushing from every direction at the same time. If everybody stopped pushing from every direction at the same time, then people would be a lot more willing to be like, "I don't feel like drinking tonight." But it gets so much constant unidirectional support from everybody, that the truth is, it's not 365 days—for me, again, this is super personal for each person—but it's not like 365 days of the same effort. The effort I felt was in the first two weeks of not drinking at all the places I used to drink. That's hard. Like, no bullshit, that's hard. It's really hard to stop drinking when you go to the places that you normally drink in. Once you canvass those places, like every restaurant where you drank, and you stop drinking, it gets much easier.

I noticed that when I told people how long it was I hadn't been drinking for—and I wasn't counting by the day, I just knew my life was better and I didn't really count as a goal. I certainly started counting when I was, like, three weeks out from a year. But people would ask me how long I hadn't been drinking for, and I would tell them, and their reaction would be as if that was an endurance thing. And the truth about it is that, once you get out of the centrifuge, then you're just out. You don't feel the pull every day, you know. So I'm lucky. For whatever my mental wiring is, it agreed with stopping. Some people aren't that lucky, and it takes a lot more effort, and that doesn't make them weaker. It just means they have to move around their own mental wiring a little bit more to hold something still. But I was really lucky. As soon as I got out of that loop where I stopped drinking at all the places I used to like drinking, it was a really easy equation.

One of the point-proving things here about it being really personal to people is, people immediately offer up, like [defensively] well, they don't really drink that much. It's so hard to talk about how you don't drink in front of people who drink, because it sounds like an indictment on people who drink. Like, you can drink a bottle of scotch in front of me, and I don't want it any more because you're drinking a bottle of scotch in front of me. It doesn't make you a bad friend. It doesn't make you a bad influence.

Do I miss it? Sometimes. That's a great question. And I have the answer. Honestly, yes. But the amount of time I've missed it—and I'm giving you a real number, this is not a poetic answer. I think if you put all the time together in the year when I thought, hm, I really want an old-fashioned because I want—and I wasn't, like, I want to get drunk. It's like, I want that old-fashioned, and I want to pick the rye, or the bourbon, and I want to have two or three, and I want to get out in the world and do that kind of damage you want to do to the world cosmically when you get out in the world after two or three drinks. If you add all that time up that I felt like I was a little bit shackled, I swear to God it's eighteen minutes. That's my best guess, is that it's eighteen minutes. Out of 365 days. So. Anyway. Everyone's gotta do their own thing. Everyone's gotta do their own thing.

Has it changed my songwriting? To be honest, I quit after I had written the last song for the record. So, we'll see. And everything changes your songwriting. Everything. Time changes your songwriting. Everything you do, everyone you love, every song you hear changes your songwriting. Every person you meet, and fall in love with, every child you have.

So I just want to say that Tuesday will mark the second year of my not having a drink. And I say not having a drink because I'm not sure I want to use the word "sobriety." And I think that the language around drinking is very tricky, and people don't like locking themselves into using certain language. So I will say that come Tuesday will have been two years since I had anything to drink. And those two years have been really, really great.

Drinking and not drinking is a very personal thing to each person. It is wired into your particular psychology, in your history. And I can only tell you in the first person who I was, what I did, how it's made my life better. I don't think you have to wait until everything is lost to stop. If you're doing a little bit more than you wanted to, it's always a good decision to do none of it. So I just want to be an example of somebody who said, that's enough. And I don't know that there's enough examples of people saying, "I just had enough."

So if you feel like some people are doing "sober October," well in some ways, you're out. And you might want to think about staying out. Look at it like this: your kidnapper sent you to the store with some money and you're free. You don't have to come back to the house of the kidnapper to bring the loaf of bread and the change. You just keep running. So if you're in "sober October," think about staying out. The next time the ladder appears in front of you to climb out of the hamster wheel of drinking, if you're getting tired of it, take it. I climbed out. I've had a great time. I haven't turned into a bore. I have—two more minutes, it'll be a real bore. But I want to be an example of someone who went, "that's enough!" We're out there. It's easy to do—well for me, it was easy to do. Three to four weeks, you don't feel it anymore. That's what I'm saying. If you're in "sober October" and you're going into week three and you're not itching to do it, maybe stay out!

JM: It’s the most personal thing to people. If I were to tell other people how they could do it, it just is so particular to your own spirit and your own psychology that it’s almost impossible to develop one way of explaining it to someone else. You have to fight really hard to look at it from a critical point of view because it’s constantly pushed on you. Every Friday and Saturday, on social media, there is enabling going on for drinking. What if I woke up every morning on Saturday and Sunday and put my feet on the ground and I just went “not hungover” and put it on social media every day? That would be an influence on people because I think you forget that’s an option. If you look at drinking the way you would look at anything else, which is risk-reward, what am I giving up? What am I getting? It’s some of the worst odds that ever existed […]

JM: Oh, I have the most amazing last-night-of-my-life-drinking story. It was Drake’s 30th birthday party, and I made quite a fool of myself. It took me weeks to stop doing this every morning I woke up. And then I had a conversation with myself. I remember where I was. I was in my sixth day of the hangover. That’s how big the hangover was. I looked out the window and I went, “OK, John, what percentage of your potential would you like to have? Because if you say you’d like 60, and you’d like to spend the other 40 having fun, that’s fine. But what percentage of what is available to you would you like to make happen? There’s no wrong answer. What is it?” I went, “100.”

JM: Oh, I quit drinking three years ago, which leveled my life out in 99% of a good way.

JM: If you can just wear a t-shirt and jeans you're looking good and I remember I had this year where—I never drank growing up—and I had the year like I was in college man, I drank every night. I drank most of the day and I wrote these songs at the same time because I had to work it all out. I had hit the wall. And everybody hits the wall, no matter what that wall is—you've been an asshole, you have a drinking problem, you have a drug problem, you've got to admit to yourself that you're never gonna make it in this, you know. Or everybody hits a wall: this person you’re with you have to leave them, you're in a relationship that's doing you no good, you've got to give up, you've got to surrender. And when you surrender that takes a minute. 
 
So people think that I went from LA, kind of Battle Studies, to Montana, but I actually was in New York.

DD: I didn't even know that.

JM: I wrote Born and Raised in New York.

DD: Oh yeah, I know that, but I thought you were like, "I'm out of here" and just went to Montana. 

JM: I said, "I'm out of here," and I went to Lafayette and Spring [Streets]. So I was right there but nobody really cared. Which, I was like, “okay, this is a market correction and I'm ready for it.” I remember taking it like, "alright, look, we're in this for the long run, let's just go back to music—" Cause I remember doing comedy, going, like, well music’s locked down. No, that’s it for the rest of your life. That's where the joy is, and I just went back to it. And I remember discovering the therapeutic—did you used to drink?

DD: Oh yeah.
 
JM: Did you ever have a year where it was good for you, where it was therapeutic? You worked shit out while you were drunk? 

DD: Absolutely, I mean there were times after I saw Barfly and I got into that whole Bukowski thing of like, I’m going to be a day drinker. And you get into this different frame of mind of drinking till 6pm and then going home. And it’s a total different world.

JM: It’s an adventure though, right? You’re adventuring. 

DD: Yeah, I needed that. I feel that all the phases of the drugs and the booze that I did—and that I got out—I look back on em and am like “oh, yeah.” I‘ve got stuff now in my mind that I learned from that time.

JM: Oh, yeah. And that's sort of the test of any drug is, “do you get anything out of it?” If the answer is no it's like, “leave it alone." I mean for me it's like can you take anything from it and for a while I took so much out of drinking. I found drinking was the only way to sit next to myself and look at myself from the outside. I used to say drinking is a good way to sit across from yourself at the table.

DD: That's gonna be wild to start drinking—the guys around you, are they like, “Hey what, you drink now?”  

JM: Yeah. I didn't really drink til I was 27 or 28.

DD: That's gotta be wild.

JM: And then I discovered, like, Lagavulin 16, and that was it for me. And I would do Lagavulin 16 on stage and—pretty good—but it made me sloppy towards the end of the show. I played some guitar solos at the end of shows that were pretty insanely stupid. But I would go to the studio and I'd wear, like, a Brioni suit—I remember I got into Brioni suits. I just wanted to go to the studio in a suit. And right around 6 o'clock the Sierra Nevada would come out.

DD: Oh, love it, that's great. 

JM: Oh, you put a Sierra Nevada right down on the microphone stand, and you just start going in your own head writing—and songs would come out! Then I go to dinner, and it's like three margaritas. And sometimes I go back to the studio. Cause I'd be excited. I walk right back into Electric Lady and I just go back, “I got it, I got it," and it would come. But I would stay out ‘til 4:00 AM.

DD: Yeah, New York style! Drinking. Yeah, drink ‘til four in New York!
 
JM: I'd come home and I would watch a movie and not really pay attention to it and eat like four Skinny Cow ice cream cones.
 
DD: Oh shit!

JM: And I would look up—this is where it intersects with Montana, ready?
 
I'd lay on my couch drunk having been berated by downtown women. Young women who saw me as the guy from the internet. 

DD: Yeah. Lower East Side?

JM: Yeah. And didn’t realize that I was a real person.

DD: Right. 

JM: And that I was really going through it, and they would rip me apart just rip me apart. 

DD: Just saying shit to you? 

JM: “Why are you drinking that? Like I know you're John Mayer, but—” Like just coming up to me and acting like I came up to them.  

DD: Like, “you ain’t shit!" 

JM: I always thought, “oh, you've never come up to a guy before.” This is what happened—and it's over for me now, right? Like, there's other names that people would want to talk to at a bar. I'm more just sort of off in my own little world. But I remember like, oh, your legs brought you here, but you think that I walked up to you. So there's a part of you that went, “I've got to engage.” And everybody's drinking, by the way. Everybody's drinking.

So I can't just go up to this guy and say I like your work because I've never done that before. Guys come up to me. So it was this twisted thing where people come up to me and start making fun of my drink or my hat or my hair—and they would roast me, they would just roast me.

DD: It's their thing, their insecurity to get into the conversation. Which is bizarre, right? 

JM: Something happened every time between the moment they went, “that's John Mayer, I gotta meet him” to the moment they got up to me. And I think—if I can guess—somewhere around halfway to me they went, “wait don't tell him you love his music, everyone tells him you love his music. You will disappear in front of him, he will pay you no attention. Give him shit instead and he will never forget the one person who gave him shit.” Little did they know that everybody chose to put the number on black. 

DD: That's crazy that that would affect you though. 

JM: Oh god it broke my heart.

DD: That's bizarre because they’re just strangers. I don't know. To me I'd be like, “get out of here," you know? 

JM: But I never had that in me. And I think they thought I did—they thought I was much more rugged than I was. And so I'd go home drunk and I'd lay on my couch and watch 30 Rock. And for anybody keeping score 30 Rock goes by way too fast if you're drunk. You don't get the jokes. It's too fast. But I would let it play in the background and I would go on like realtor.com and I would just look at places in Montana.

I lived in New York for a while where I did the majority of my drinking.

I don't anymore. I beat it. Meaning, I beat the game. I beat the final boss. They said, go home, you're finished. Got my diploma that's it. Don't worry, there's other things I do. They just don't offer them to you when you sit down to have a salad. I find that helpful. "May I interest you in the thing that has been plaguing you the last four years, before I bring you bread?"