Brantley Gilbert, who has been sober since 2012, never hid from the fact that he overcame a drinking problem. But the singer is now revealing that he relied on the support of fellow recovering addict Keith Urban when his addictions threatened to get the best of him.

“When I was making changes in my life, I was down and out, I was even in the hospital, and he showed up and spent several hours with me one day out of nowhere, just encouraging me, because I had a lot of worries about doing my job," Gilbert tells Country Countdown USA. "Looking back, I was thinking, since I was 15 years old, I’d been sneaking beers, I hadn’t been sober for a lot of these things. I was nervous about writing, performing, and doing my job like I used to. He told me, ‘Man, it’s a whole new world. It’s different, but you’re gonna have a lot more fun with it.’"

The 'Small Town Throwdown' singer says it wasn't just Urban's words, but also his physical presence that helped him through one of the roughest times in his life.

"He’s one of those guys when you meet him, you know he has a good soul," Gilbert adds. "He has an awesome heart and is an awesome dude. That was a pretty impressive thing to me. You meet people in the business, and wonder how compassionate they are. But he showed up out of the blue, and I hardly knew the guy. I’ll never forget that as long as I live, and I’m indebted to him now.”

Gilbert, who was in an alcohol-related accident when he was 19 that could have been fatal, says there wasn't one specific incident that made him decide to give up alcohol.

“It was just time to do something different,” he tells The Boot. “I felt like I could be more productive if I didn’t [drink], and it wasn’t something I really needed in my life. I don’t need anything to have a good time or be a hell-raiser. I was born one. It had a lot to do with things that were going on around me. I wanted to make sure that if somebody special did come along, I was the kind of man that a woman like her would deserve. There were a lot of different reasons.”

Gilbert will continue his Let It Ride Tour this week with shows in Iowa and Missouri. See all of his upcoming shows here.

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