Lady A Singer Charles Kelley Opens Up About Sobriety in New Docuseries: 'Best Decision'

Lady A’s Charles Kelley opens up about his journey to sobriety.

On the Friday, November 15 episode of the Hulu docuseries, It’s all land, Kelley, 43, spoke about quitting alcohol after it began to affect his marriage to wife Cassie McConnell Kelley, as well as his job.

“Success is definitely a double-edged sword. You know, once you know what it feels like and you’ve been out there, it’s a drug in itself,” Kelley said on the show. “There’s a lot of doubt that can come up and there’s just a lot of, I think, keeping your ego in check. I had to come back from treatment.”

According to Kelley, Lady A postponed their Request Line Tour for an entire year so he could check into a rehab facility in Utah.

“We were kind of talking to our team about, you know, ‘What should we say? Why are we canceling the tour?’ ” he recalled, before stating that he and bandmates Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood wanted to be “more honest” about the current situation.

“Dave and Hillary have been such good friends throughout this journey,” he said. “And thank God, I felt like I got a second lease on my career and my marriage.”

Lady A’s Charles Kelley on his journey to sobriety: ‘I learned there are degrees of alcoholics’

Charles Kelley and wife Cassie.

The country singer previously revealed that McConnell Kelley, 41, with whom he has one son, planned to meet with a divorce attorney before checking into rehab.

“When he was in rehab and I went there for family week, one of the first messages you got was, ‘You’re going to have to work just as hard here.’ And I remember being so angry,” Kelley’s wife said earlier during an appearance on CBS Morning. “Like, you did this. And now I have to do all this work? But … it affects every person in that family system. So I could choose not to do the work, but then I have to live with the way I was affected and untreated, so whether Charles and I were married or not, I saw him again for the rest of my life, and I still had to deal with what I went through.”

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Lady A shared a statement on Instagram in August 2022 when they first announced the postponement of their tour.

“Being on the road with our fans is our greatest joy, so this was a difficult but important decision,” the group wrote. “We’re a band, but more importantly…we’re a family. We’re proud to say that Charles is on the road to sobriety.”

Dave Haywood, Hillary Scott and Charles Kelley of Lady A in Nashville in June 2023.

Ed Rode/Getty

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Also during his appearance on It’s all land, Kelley said getting sober was “the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.”

“It wasn’t my intention to share my story so much. I just think it’s so common and we all struggle with it. The stage of my career and the stage of my life I’m in, I want to be able to give something back, in a positive way, even if it’s just a little encouragement,” he said.

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, contact the SAMHSA Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.

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Source: HIS Education