Zach Bryan says quitting alcohol has brought back his excitement for songwriting, along with the urge to get up in the morning and do things he enjoys. He made the remarks in a conversation with Matthew McConaughey uploaded to his YouTube channel on Oct. 16.

“Quitting drinking has been really great. I’ve had a lot of fun,” the 30-year-old said on his YouTube channel. “I feel like a kid again. I wake up and I’m ready to go, I want to jump in the pond. I want to play with the dog. I want to do everything.”

His decision followed a month-long motorcycle trip from New York to Los Angeles. He’d planned to travel with friends, but ended up spending much of the journey drinking alone at bars.

“I was stopping at all these bars and drinking myself to sleep. Waking up every morning, getting on my motorcycle thinking I was on some sort of soul journey,” he recalled.

Bryan said he’d once dismissed sobriety and believed people with drinking problems should be able to control themselves. “I never realised I had a problem.”

At a Pilot truck stop outside Seattle, he bought a 40-ounce Budweiser and sat on the curb with his motorcycle in front of him. After everything he’d seen and done on the trip, he found himself questioning what he’d gotten from it.

“I’m drinking [the beer] and I’m thinking ‘What the hell was all that worth? Why did I do any of that? I feel emptier than when I left.’”