A glance again on Keith Urban’s previous battle with cocaine and alcohol

Keith Urban and wife Nicole Kidman‘s marriage looks to many to be the picture of a perfect Hollywood union – but just four months after they tied the knot, the couple’s relationship was rocked by the singer’s brutal battle with drug and alcohol abuse, which saw the actress forced to stage an intervention to help him get sober. 

While the couple have enjoyed nearly 18 years of wedded bliss, Keith’s past battle with drugs and alcohol almost drove them apart as he previously admitted to being a ‘real binge drinker.’

The father-of-two, whose previously said he grew up watching his father’s heavy drinking, previously said it took him ‘a long time to get sober’ because he didn’t ‘recognize’ his alcoholism. 

‘I didn’t drink like my dad, so I compared everything to him,’ he recalled in a 2021 interview with Rolling Stone. ‘But I was able to finally make the right choice in my life, that I wish my dad [Robert Urban, who died in 2015,] would have made.’ 

Despite his history with substance abuse, Urban recently compared listening to Ariana Grande‘s catchy new single, We Can’t Be Friends, to ‘audible heroin.’

While most interpreted the comparison in a light-hearted way, the joke reportedly  ticked off his spouse, 56, as it ‘brought back a very dark time for them when they almost split.’

‘Nicole would never ask him to take down a post but she was disappointed,’ an insider told Woman’s Day magazine.

The comment also bothered her because ‘she doesn’t want her kids to start thinking it’s cool or OK or something you can easily fix.’ 

The insider added that the couple – who share daughters Sunday, 15, and Faith, 13 – ‘went through hell because of Keith’s addictions.’

Urban publicly battled drug and alcohol addiction, and entered rehab on several occasions, last checking himself into the Betty Ford Center in October 2006 just months after marrying Kidman. 

Keith once recalled the moment his wife staged an intervention for his addiction issues, in an extract from the book Keith Urban by Jeff Apter.

Keith told Rolling Stone magazine back in 2016 that he would have understood if Nicole chose to leave him after his 2006 rehab stint as the couple had only married that year.

‘I was very, very blessed to have Nic call an intervention on me,’ Keith said, adding that his reckless behavior ’caused the implosion of my fresh marriage’.

He also reflected on the intervention with Oprah Winfrey, admitting to the famed talk show host that he ‘went off the rails’ and ‘needed help and a new direction’ in his life.

Kidman, who was working in Rome at the time of his bender, flew back to the States and rounded up his friends to stage an intervention.

‘The love in that room in that moment was just right,’ Keith told Oprah. ‘To see love in action in that way… I’d never experienced anything like that before.’

While speaking of Kidman’s decision to stay with him during his third stint in rehab in eight years, Urban said he, at that point, ‘she really should’ve just walked.’ 

‘I’m just so glad she didn’t, and she made a decision to turn around and initiate ultimately this intervention,’ he said. 

At the time, he released a statement, which read: ‘I deeply regret the hurt this has caused Nicole and the ones who love and support me. One can never let one’s guard down on recovery, and I’m afraid that I have.’ 

Kidman told Vanity Fair in 2007, during that period, that they ‘were in a very, very, very bad, painful place’ and ‘managed to step through it [together].’ 

‘I hope that gives some people some hope who may be in the same place. And that’s enough said. Anything else is overindulgent and unnecessary right now. And I think it jinxes it, in a way, and that’s why I don’t go on about my enormous feelings for this man,’ she said. 

Keith has been open about his past struggles with alcohol addiction, and revealed at the South By Southwest conference in Texas in 2018 that he wished he’d got sober earlier in his life.

‘I wish I’d gotten sober many years earlier than I did, but it is what it is,’ he said.

‘I knew I wasn’t at my full potential, and that’s what was starting to get to me. I was enslaved… I was living a very, very small life.’

Keith also admitted he ‘sucked at relationships’ prior to meeting Kidman, and that his song lyrics about love were far from his reality.

‘I would write these songs about love and relationships; I remember writing Somebody Like You and playing it for my girlfriend at the time and she just looked at me and said, ‘You’re a f**king hypocrite,’ and I couldn’t argue that,’ he said.

Keith and Nicole met in 2005 and tied the knot a year later. They are parents to daughters Sunday Rose, 15, and Faith Margaret, 13.

Urban previously told Rolling Stone that he first smoked freebased cocaine – a purer form of crack cocaine – in the 1990s after he was offered it by a roommate.

‘And then one day he offered me this massive pipe,’ he said.

‘I’d never had it, it looked good, so I took it. Things didn’t immediately go pear-shaped, but that was the beginning of it.’

Urban’s former songwriting partner, Vernon Rust, alleged in his book, Fake News, that they once snorted $320,000 of cocaine together during an ‘epic binge’ in the the late 1990s. 

According to New Idea, Rust’s tell-all details how Urban use to use ‘coke, crack, and weed.’ 

According to New Idea, Rust’s tell-all details how Urban use to use ‘coke, crRust also claims they spent ‘over a quarter of a million dollars on cocaine’ recording the their 1997 album. 

‘We lived in the studio. We did a lot of coke, and it stayed up for days,’ Rust wrote. ‘Every track off that album was coke-fuelled.’ 

Despite his sobriety, Urban said he doesn’t ‘really talk much about’ it because ‘it’s a very personal thing’ and he doesn’t ‘want anyone thinking that I have a negative opinion of drugs or alcohol.’ 

‘I don’t have any at all, none. I want people to come to my concert and do whatever the hell they want to do,’ he insisted. 

Urban added: ‘I don’t want people at my concert looking at the stage and thinking about sobriety. That would be the death of a gig for me. It’s not what I want. I’m not there for that. I’m not an AA meeting. I’m on stage and I’m playing and I’m singing, and we’re going to have a great time. We’re going to let go of everything and be in the moment.’ 

He has, however, wrote about the journey in multiple songs, including his 2009 track, Thank You. 

The lyrics, dedicated to Kidman, read: ‘And I thank you for my heart/ I thank you for my life/ And I thank God for grace and mercy/ And that you became my wife.’ 

While appearing on the Living & Learning with Reba McEntire in December 2021, Urban said ‘marrying the right person [was] massive’ for him. 

‘Marrying for the right reasons [and] getting sober 15 years ago [were both] a big turning point in my life,’ he gushed. 

Ultimately, he told the Sunday Times, in 2022, that he had to ‘find a different way to be in the world’ after getting sober. 

‘I’m glad it didn’t change anything about my music. I wrote plenty of hit songs while drunk. I wrote plenty sober,’ he continued. ‘I feel lucky it hasn’t defined my creativity.’ 

Before changing his life, Urban admitted that he ‘used to do a thing where’ he’d ‘work out the ramifications of whatever’ he did ‘then decide whether it was worth it.’ 

‘Most of the time I decided it was going to be despite the problems it would cause,’ he confessed to The Sun in May 2022. ‘I’d go, ‘” know this is going to cause this issue, but it will be bloody fun.”‘ Night-time me hates daytime me, it’s so true. But the next morning, night-time me is nowhere to be found — he’s totally unaccountable.’ 

Now, he says he is committed to setting ‘a good example’ for his daughters. 

‘I still don’t know if I’m getting it right. … I have made so many mistakes, but you have to work out what works for you. My message to them is always to do whatever they are passionate about, I don’t care, as long as they work hard to achieve it,’ he told The Sun in 2022. 

In November, he joked that if he hadn’t gone into music that he would ‘probably be in jail.’ 

Urban, who has recorded 12 albums, has earned four Grammy Awards, 15 Academy of Country Music Awards, 13 CMA Awards and, even, scored a Golden Globe nomination for his song For You in 2012.