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B.J. Barham

B.J. Barham used to drink too much.

At his worst, he says, he was pouring through amounts that would make most people too drunk to stand, and that was just a Tuesday. He would show up at family functions with a flask of Jameson in hand. Gaps plagued his memory.

The onstage antics were worse. American Aquarium, the blue-collar, alt-country outfit he's fronted for a decade, earned a reputation of extreme insobriety. Barham would drink anything you gave him; night after night, fans lined up shots onstage, and he would down them. American Aquarium averaged between 250 or 300 annual showsthat's gallons of free liquor, tubs of it even.

But Barham knew he wasn't strong enough to sustain such games of self-destruction. He realized he could die; he'd seen it happen in his own family. So, on Aug. 31, 2014, during an end-of-tour bender in Forth Worth, Texas, he took his last drinkmost likely a shot of Irish whiskey, he thinks.