Country singer Mark Chesnutt Opens Up About Battle With Alcoholism: ‘I Had to Quit Drinking or Die’

Country great Mark Chesnutt has shockingly revealed he nearly drank himself into a coffin in a nightmare battle with the bottle.

The 61-year-old “Brother Jukebox” singer rivaled Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson as country’s top hitmaker in the 1990s, but now admits he was intoxicated during nearly all his performances.

“I wasn’t blasted every time [onstage], but it was close,” he recalls.

The drinking became completely out of control while he was shut in during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he says: “I drank all day, every day.”

“I’d get up in the middle of the night and drink. I’d never stop.”

The drinking led to his body breaking down — leading to delicate spinal surgery in 2021.

Still, the Almost Goodbye singer kept drinking until 2023 when he was hospitalized with multiple organ failure.

“I knew I was dying,” he recalls. “I was bleeding out from my inside. They basically told me they were gonna get me over this, but if they discharged me and I went home and started drinking again, I’d be back in a matter of days, and I might not leave alive.”

“I had to quit drinking or die.”

Chesnutt heeded the wake-up call.

Following lifesaving quadruple bypass heart surgery last year, he’s hit the road with his aptly named Redemption tour.

A friend says the Country crooner is grateful he got scared straight.

“Mark dreamed of being a country star since he was a young colt, and achieved that, but he knows he hurt himself, his career and his family with his out-of-control drinking for decades,” the friend says.

“Now he’s trying to make up for lost time, realizing how very close he came to being six feet under.”