Tyler: I continue to partake in the 12-step program. I can be in Afghanistan, I can be in Japan, and go to a meeting and the room is full of alcoholics and people that did drugs like I did. Only nobody’s high. And, believe me, the stuff they say is phenomenal. They’re still crazy, they’re just not under the influence.

What's the best advice you've received along the way?

Walsh: Number one: Don’t drink drunk.

Harper: Don’t try to tell yourself a story that only you would believe.

Baker: One of my friends was honest enough to tell me: You will never not think with your addict brain. It will never go all the way away. And you can learn how to interact with it, and you can make peace with it, and you can identify it and control it.

Anastasio: Surrender, and ask for help.

Isbell: Keep your head and your ass in the same place. I think that means: Be in the present, don’t focus too much on the past or the future. Just try to live your life as it happens. I like that one a whole lot.

Tyler: Don’t pick that—it’ll get infected.

Harper: I can’t tell you how much better my life is without that shit. My clarity and dynamics and directness with my friends, with my physical self and endeavors, with my creative process in the studio and live.

Tyler: I was just an angry fuck when I got high. And holding on to anger is like grabbing on to a hot coal with the intent of throwing it to someone else. You’re the one that gets burned.

Baker: What I see in so many people that recover successfully, they become passionate about something. Like writing music, or painting, or hiking, or, like, building ships in bottles. It doesn’t matter what it is, but it’s, like, a highly specified thing, and it either gives you a respite from the world or it gives you a creative outlet and it occupies your mind in a productive way. Because the addict’s brain is scurrying to be gratified and scurrying to be occupied.

Soko: I can totally party. If I decide to go out, I can be out till 6 a.m. and be sober and be completely fine. But it needs to be the right time and the right place and the right people.

Walsh: Most of my buddies are dead. And for some reason, I am not.

Do you miss anything about how you used to be?

Smith: [laughs wryly] No.

Tyler: There are times. But, you know what, I play it through. Once you see what happened to you when you went too far, you don’t want to go back again to all that shit.

Harper: Hey, listen, I miss it all. I miss a fine bottle of red wine, I miss my Johnnie Walker Blue Label, I miss being obnoxious and loose-lipped with close friends. But I don’t miss anything about the way I used to be, because I’m too satisfied with how I feel without it. I do miss certain components, but it’s completely outbalanced by the benefits.

Isbell: Definitely. I don’t miss things about how I used to be, but I miss things about how the world used to be when I was drunk. It was kind of nice to not feel like everybody was moving in slow motion. I mean, some nights you just get really drunk and you get onstage and you rock out and it’s fun. It’s probably not nearly as much fun for the audience as you—I’m sure if I went back and watched my shows then, it’s horrifyingly bad—but man, at the time, in the moment, it felt like I was on top of the world. I do miss certain things. But the minuses are a lot more than the pluses of ever going back to that life. If I were to relapse and stay that way, then I would miss everything about the life that I have now. Not just two or three moments that I probably remember very differently from how they actually happened.

“When I was full of vodka, I'd have thoughts and—boom!—I would be doing it.”

—Joe Walsh

Baker: No. [laughs] No, I don’t. I’m sorry—it’s not funny. It’s darkly funny. There’s a part of me that wishes, when I go out to a nice dinner with my friends or my partner, that I could also enjoy trying wine or whatever. Because I guess I’m particular about my coffee and how it tastes and where it comes from and how it’s made. People are like that with beer and wine and it seems to be fun. But in truth, that was never my relationship to it, since I never, ever thought what alcohol tasted like, or even cared. It was just a catalyst for a feeling. And so I wish I could enjoy things in that healthy and natural way, and sometimes I think of the sort of media image of how a person is supposed to be in their 20s, and I think of a bar scene and people going out and drinking a little too much and being funny at karaoke, and I wonder what my life would be like if I could have those sort of silly and innocuous and quite pure interactions with alcohol. But it’s not enough for me to forfeit what I believe is an immense accomplishment of being able to live a much healthier life. And as far as the very person I was, not the activities, I don’t miss that person at all. That person was very selfish and hurt a lot of people. I’m able to say that I like myself so much more now.