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Why Billy Joel Quit Drinking
And what we can learn from his success.
Legendary musician Billy Joel began struggling with alcohol abuse near the turn of the millennium. The 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 caused him to go into a deep depression, for which he used alcohol as a form of self-medication.
He’s tried to quit drinking several times in the past, but it never stuck. Two decades ago, he made headlines for going to rehab, first in 2002, then again in 2005. Neither of the stays led to long-term sobriety, but he thought that they had helped to get his heavy drinking under control.
In interviews, he described how he had learned to drink in moderation. In a 2013 interview with the New York Times, for example, he said that he was down to just having a glass of wine with dinner.
However, in a new interview with the LA Times, Joel is singing a different tune. (Please forgive that miserable pun.)
In this interview, from almost exactly a decade after the NYT piece, Joel said that he is now completely alcohol-free:
I stopped [drinking] a couple of years ago. It wasn’t a big AA kick. I just got to a point where I’d had enough. I didn’t enjoy being completely inebriated, and it probably created more problems in my life than I needed.
