All That Remains’ Phil Labonte Reveals He’s ‘About Four Years Sober’
All That Remains frontman Phil Labonte has revealed that he's among the rockers who've decided to cut alcohol out of their life. The musician made the revelation while guesting on the High Notes podcast (heard below), while also revealing it's "been just about four years" since he last took a drink, though admitting a few slips in the first year put that official timetable between now and his last drink at between three and four years.
"I have not had any alcohol in, I believe now it's been just about four years, I think," he explained. "Actually, I quit drinking four years ago, and then there were a couple of times where I fell off the wagon in 2017. And the very last time I had any drop of alcohol, I believe, was February of 2018, because I had a shot with a friend. And I was, like, 'I don't know why I did that. I don't wanna do that anymore.'"
He continued, "There were a couple of times in 2017 where I fell off the wagon but I stopped drinking daily or regularly, which was almost daily. February 16 of 2017 was the last time that I actually was drinking all the time, and then I stopped, and then a couple of times I fell off the wagon and thought that I could control it. But I'm not sure that I can."
Labonte says he's thankful that with each of the slips, he caught himself thinking "Why am I doing this?," and it led to his commitment to eventually stop altogether.
"I stopped without any kind of significant problem. I guess it was me kind of learning that I can't control it, or that it's not worth the risk," he explained. "Bad things happen when I drink too much — at least personally I feel like bad things happen."
Describing his process, the vocalist revealed, "I didn't go to a program to quit. I'm not super familiar with what A.A. [Alcoholics Anonymous] is like, but I've heard stories from people, and I hear that there's a lot of reconciliation with people that you hurt and stuff like that. I never did that, so me quitting drinking wasn't something that I kind of told everyone in my life that I was doing. It wasn't like there was an intervention and it wasn't like I had to go ahead and tell everybody, 'Look, I have to quit drinking, and I'm going to rehab to do this,' and da da da. I didn't have to go and make amends, 'cause, thankfully, my drinking was very self-contained; thankfully, it didn't affect other people. I never hurt other people in any significant way other than being a pain in the butt or saying something rude or being thoughtless or whatever. So a lot of people didn't realize that I quit."
The singer reveals during the chat that the last drink he had was in a social surrounding with a friend saying, "Let's get a shot," but then afterward he once again caught himself saying, "Why did I do that?"
"I thought about it, and I was, like, the reason I did that is because it's a social thing, and I was never a social drinker. For me, drinking was always a thing that I did… I was alone a lot. I'm very much an introverted person, and drinking was an alone thing for me or something that I… I didn't have to be around other people to drink." Once realizing that taking the shot was out of character for his drinking habits, he stopped for the night.
"That was it. And I was just like, 'I don't want it,'" says the singer. "And that was the last time I had anything to drink at all."
All That Remains last released their Victim of the New Disease album in 2018. Last year, Labonte revealed that the band had been working on a new album with the hope of releasing it in 2021.
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