AJ McLean on His Sobriety Journey: ‘I’m Sticking This One Out’

AJ McLean on May 31, 2025 in Inglewood, CA. - Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

AJ McLean is in “the best head space I’ve ever been in my life.” In a new interview with People published on Thursday, the Backstreet Boy reflected on how he is focused on his sobriety journey after going through a relapse several years ago.

“Towards the end of the DNA tour, I got sober again for the last time,” McLean told the outlet. (In 2023, he also told People that he was celebrating two years of sobriety at the end of September.)

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“I’m sticking this one out all the way. It’s a daily thing,” he said. “But I have finally done what has been suggested amongst the sober community, and my life has flipped in a positive way.”

McLean says that these days he focuses on going to the gym “six days a week” and has created a “healthy balance between family and work.”

“I’ve discovered new verbiage, such as boundaries, never really had those. Now I have those, which is a blessing,” he said. “AJ is a member of a group. He is a persona, but he doesn’t define me as an individual. Alexander James is who I am.”

Back in 2020, McLean told People that he had struggled with his sobriety and was 10 months sober after hitting “many rock bottoms” while being in and out of sobriety.

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“My wife and I had always had this agreement, which was, if I smelled like alcohol, I wasn’t allowed to play with my kids — I couldn’t be around my kids,” he told the outlet at the time. “But what really hit me was the moment, my youngest daughter Lyric said to me that night, ‘You don’t smell like my daddy.’ And when she said that to me, that was it. Enough said. I felt disgusting.”

The new interview comes as McLean hosts Building the Band on Netflix, which features Liam Payne in a posthumous TV appearance. “He and I immediately connected on not only a music level but a human level,” McLean told Rolling Stone for a cover story about Payne’s death. “We both were living a parallel life. There was a lot of funny boy-band jabs that we would take at each other. He really had a quick wit to him — that nice, dry, British humor.”

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