Miley Cyrus didn’t want to join the 27 Club: ‘I have been focusing on sobriety’
Miley Cyrus is “focusing on sobriety” after experiencing a mid-pandemic relapse.
The “Midnight Sky” artist, now more than five weeks sober, recently opened up to Rolling Stone about addiction, mental health and her fear of being inducted into the unofficial “27 Club” of musicians — such as Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix — who died at a young age, often because of substance abuse.
“Actually, one of the reasons I got sober was I had just turned 26, and I said, ‘I got to pull my [self] together before I’m 27, because 27 is the time you cross over that threshold into living or dying a legend,’” she said in an interview published Friday.
“I didn’t want to not make it through being 27. I didn’t want to join that club. Probably about halfway into 26, I got sober. Then by 27, [November 2019] I was pretty much fully sober. Then, like a lot of people during the pandemic, I fell off. It was really a struggle. Mental health and anxiety and all that. I lost myself there.”
The “Prisoner” hitmaker later clarified that she was referring specifically to alcohol, adding, “It would have to be a cold day in hell for me to relapse on drugs.”
“Haven’t done drugs in years,” she said. “I would possibly take mushrooms. I did take ayahuasca, and I really, really liked that, but I don’t think I would do it again.”
Last week, Cyrus released her seventh studio album, “Plastic Hearts,” a pop-rock fusion, featuring the likes of Billy Idol, Joan Jett and Stevie Nicks, that has helped usher in a new and “pivotal” era for the Disney Channel alum both artistically and personally.
“I don’t like ever saying anything in a very solid concrete way, but right now I have been focusing on sobriety as I wanted to wake up 100 percent, 100 percent of the time,” she said. “If I’ve ever learned to balance myself and to not take it too far, I would. But so far any time I’ve messed with that, it hasn’t gotten me what I want.”
Miley Cyrus has been busy putting her stamp on songs by Britney Spears, the Cranberries, the Cure, Pearl Jam and other surprising cover renditions.
She also reflected on her earlier days in the public eye, when she said the media tended to speculate about her substance use and “sanity” based on trivial details, such as how she styled her hair at any given time. If her hair was “long and blond,” she said, the tabloids would wrongly assume “she cannot be [messed up] on drugs.”
In reality, Cyrus said her journey with sobriety has been “back-and-forth.” And she’s recently come to the realization that “‘Live fast, die young’ isn’t really the goal.”
“Sobriety was a choice,” she added. “It depends how you look at it. I think it’s necessary for me to fulfill my purpose right now. I try to bookend everything for right now, because otherwise it becomes a statement [and] that pressure of maintaining. I guess that’s what ‘Midnight Sky’ says, ‘Forever and ever no more.’ No more concrete statements.”
Cyrus’ full interview can be read at Rolling Stone.
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