What musician James Taylor taught me about sobriety — and myself

Musician James Taylor once said one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard about sobriety.

During an appearance on the popular WTF podcast back in 2015, he spoke at length about mental health struggles and his addictions to alcohol and heroin. Taylor spent time in a psychiatric hospital when he was in high school and lost a brother to alcoholism. His father was also an alcoholic.

I listened to the WTF pod a lot back then and I couldn’t tell you much now about what I heard on the various episodes. One thing Taylor said has always stuck with me, however, and ever since I heard it I’ve told people it’s the perfect description of my brain.

Legendary singer-songwriter James Taylor, his wife Kim Taylor, and cellist Owen Young perform a musical tribute to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during a ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 30, 2020. (Jay Godwin, Wikimedia Commons)

I re-listened to the episode today for the first time since 2015 so I could get the quote exactly right. Earlier on, he’d talked about how he felt that evolution probably predisposed us as humans to a more action-packed life than modern existance has given us. He suggested that drugs were a way he compensated for that.

Here it is:

“The way I felt about it was that, the way I’ve come to feel about it, is that I was probably, like, rowing some Viking boat across the seas in a former life. And when you sit me down in a sort of suburban context, my nervous system and my body and my entire wiring is just not ready for it.

“I’m ready for something else. I’m ready for war, I’m ready to battle the elements or to raid villages or defend villages. But I’m not comfortable on the couch watching baseball.”

A moment of clarity

Hearing my own life experience described in this novel way just caused something to click.

I never was one to sit on the couch for hours and watch TV. I would feel agitated and bored, and then I’d feel bad about that because people wanted to sit and watch TV with me and I just couldn’t get comfortable with it. I need movement, I need action, whether that’s writing an article the way I am now at 10:52 p.m. on a Monday night (I’ll be publishing this in the morning) or climbing stairs and lifting weights at the gym, another one of my favourite nighttime routines.

I always felt that there was something off about me, something wrong. Why couldn’t I find pleasure or relaxation in the zoning out process. I felt abnormal.

I still feel abnormal, given the typical daily screen time of your average North American, but to hear someone as smart and articulate and talented and accomplished as James Taylor describe the very same thing as his life experience, it at least told me: “there are people like you. And they’re pretty damn special.”

Find that fix

The way Taylor dealt with an overactive mind was really getting into exercise, which is something that also mirrors my experience. Going to the gym at night helps keep me from drinking at night, because drinking is the only thing that allows my mind to slow down enough to actually enjoy sitting in front of the TV.

Since that time, and moreso over the past couple of years, I’ve become a lot more comfortable with being abnormal in this way.

It sure beats surrendering to normalcy, which for me would include slowly killing myself with booze every night while watching some crappy drama.

I don’t feel bad anymore about spending more time at night on a rowing machine like it were a Viking boat splashing through the high seas, climbing stairs like I’m working my way up a mountain, or doing pull-ups like I’m swinging on a vine through the jungle.

As James Taylor taught me, part of figuring out your own sobriety is figuring out — and accepting — who you are as a person.

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Summarize

What musician James Taylor taught me about sobriety — and myself

A moment of clarity

Find that fix