Man alive, I’m alive.

Man Alive has been out for a little over a week, so I thought I’d share a little bit about what inspired this song.

If you know me or have been following me for a while, you already know I’m in recovery. I spent my active addiction actively avoiding any chance of success in music, probably because subconsciously, I knew I wasn’t ready. I believe that if my career had gone exactly the way I wanted—if I was the Beyoncé of sad piano girls, with unfettered access to money, alcohol, and drugs, with people on my payroll—I would be dead.

In early sobriety, I was tasked with taking inventory of my entire life up to that point. Resentments, fears, my life and my choices, all under a magnifying glass. The one thing that stood out to me, more than anything else, was my tendency to self-sabotage. I saw it in my choice of partners, my choice of jobs, my choices to stay in certain situations rather than leave when I’d outgrown them. I didn’t believe I deserved good things, and when bad things inevitably came my way, I drank to change the way I felt.

When I was newly sober and didn’t have my best friend Fernet-Branca to pull me out of a bad mood (and into a blackout), I struggled with my self-esteem and self-worth even more. However, as I continued on, stacking one-day-at-a-times, I found that things got better with almost no effort on my part. Changing my thinking changed my reality.

“Man alive, I’m alive” is the seed that grew into this song. It came to me at work one day, while I was taking the trash out at 5th & Taylor. I started thinking about the grace I was shown in the face of all I’d done—for example, management at 5th & Taylor let me keep my job after I no-call no-showed due to being incarcerated, which allowed me to rebuild my life. I thought about how truly miraculous it was that I walked away from three totaled cars without a scratch. It was clear that I was given a second chance, and was being strongly encouraged not to waste it.

So I’ll never stop talking about my sobriety. Without it, it’s likely I wouldn’t be here. And man alive, I’m alive.