Country music is full of drinking songs. They could be for any mood: drown your sorrows with Merle Haggard’s “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink” or party until sunrise with Eric Church’s “Drink In My Hand.” But for one modern country star, the closest he’ll get to a drink is in song.

“I never thought I would be where I am as a mature father, sober after four years—it changed my world,” said Jake Owen during a recent appearance on the Big D and Bubba radio show. Owen, 44, arrived on the country music scene in the mid-2000s, topping the charts for the first time with “Barefoot Blue Jean Night” in 2011.

His 2019 album, Greetings From…Jake produced the best-selling singles “I Was Jack (You Were Diane),” “Homemade,” “Made For You,” and “Down to the Honkytonk.” But as he told the radio hosts, the next time he’s at the honkytonk, he’s just ordering a water.

“I never was a big drinker, but when I did drink, I was just a total jerk,” he explained. “I always told people I’ve been mistaken as someone, a kid that was a bit cocky and had this like, arrogance about him. But it wasn’t. It was my insecurities, man. It was my insecurities and wanting people to believe I was good enough to be here.”

Owen explained that he would do things to prove he was “good enough,” which just rubbed everyone the wrong way. “I’ll never forget [country singer] Charles Kelley telling me that one day. ‘Jake, you come into a room like you’re the peacock.’ And I’m like, whoa. That’s not me. I don’t want to ever be like that,” said Owen.

“I’ve matured,” said Owen. He also credits his decision to quit drinking on being “a good example to my little girls.” He has a 12-year-old daughter with his ex-wife, Lacey Buchanan, and a six-year-old daughter with his longtime girlfriend, Erica Hartlein. “My little girl, who’s six, she’s basically never seen me drink,” he said.”

Owen noted that the younger generation of fans has also cut back on getting wasted. “The idea that ‘you gotta have alcohol to have fun,’ it’s all subsiding a little bit. People are realizing they don’t have to have that to have a great time,” he said.

He also explained that he didn’t enter rehab or that he doesn’t “go to [Alcoholics Anonymous] meetings or anything like that.” He merely decided to stop drinking and has kept to it ever since.

“One day, it was just like, ‘I don’t ever want to be that jerk again.’ And I promised my friends that they’d never see me do it, and they were like, ‘yeah right,’’ remarked Owen. “And four years later, they’re [saying] ‘Dude, I’m so proud of you.’”

While he doesn’t preach sobriety, Jake Owen says that his success has inspired some of his friends. “[They’ve] seen the happiness in me. ‘I think I’m going to do that too.’ I’m not telling them to. They see it.”