Why John Mayer Quit Drinking After Drake’s Birthday Party
John Mayer has been praised for his thoughtful songwriting, crazy sick guitar skills and overall great music. But on the flip side, he's also been used as gossip fodder for his partying ways. But in a new interview Complex, the Grammy Award winner opens up about reaching two years away from alcohol.
"It is the most personal thing to people," John said, referring to his previous alcohol-filled days. "Try talking to someone else about drinking. Try talking to someone else about how you haven’t had a drink in two years and watch what happens to them. It is just so particular to your own spirit and 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 that is going on for drinking."
He also added, "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. You forget that’s an option."
What sparked this change in his lifestyle?
A six-day hangover following Drake's 30th birthday party.
"That's how big the hangover was," he revealed. "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.'"
He also delved into the recent passing of Mac Miller, who Mayer got to play with on "Small Worlds."
He said, "Every morning I wake up, I go, 'I get another one of these.' And most people figure that out much later on in life. Not drinking has a lot to do with plugging into that a little earlier than other people, but I go, like, 'I still get to ride the ride.' And that’s why, when people we love pass away, we go, like, 'Oh, you can’t stay on the ride?' When Mac Miller passed away, my first thought was, You don’t get to stay here. You don’t get to keep riding this ride, this beautiful ride that, if you’re lucky enough to have the talent, you get to just keep…"
Watch more from John Mayer's chat with Complex and Fear of God designer Jerry Lorenzo, below.