The “bad boy” of the Backstreet Boys has cleaned up his act. He chats with IN about sobriety, healthy routines, and why it’s more important than ever to be an ally to the LGBTQ+ community…
By Karen Kwan
For much of the Backstreet Boys’ time in the spotlight, AJ McLean was – and some might say continues to be – the “bad boy” of the group. He has the most tattoos, his nails are always painted (he even has his own brand of vegan nail polish, called Ava Dean Beauty) and he’s the one who’s been known to party hard and has been to rehab.
But these days, McLean, 46, is much more than this bad-boy persona. His latest work? He’s a brand ambassador for Canadian non-alcoholic cocktail brand Atypique and he’s even shedding his rogue persona by going by his full name, Alexander James. We caught up with McLean while he was in Toronto with Atypique to learn more about his sobriety journey, his workout routine and how he takes care of his mental health.
In your journey to sobriety, I understand that Kevin [Richardson] was the first person who held an intervention?
Yeah, back in 2001, there was a baseball game where we were supposed to be throwing the first pitch out. I partied like a rock star the night before and it was on our day off, and I decided that I wasn’t gonna do it. Kevin was not happy about that. Broke down the door to my room [when] he couldn’t get into my bedroom. I had double-bolted it. We exchanged words that I will not repeat – they are a little foul – but the most pivotal thing he said was, ‘I will never trust you again, you are dead to me.’ So, I left from there and went straight into rehab.
I’ve been around three times. I kept trying to get it right on my own, which – if anyone is in the program, they know doesn’t work very well. It took my youngest daughter to really save my life a little over two and a half years ago. I went on a two-day bender and when I flew home, I went to give my daughter a hug and she wouldn’t hug me. She said, ‘You don’t smell like my daddy,’ and that was it. That was the turning point for me, and I have not looked back.
What do you wish more people understood about sobriety?
It’s a personal journey. It’s a personal choice: you can’t force someone to get sober, be sober, go to meetings, any of these things. You have to want it. And for some people, you have to hit rock bottom. I thought for years that I’d hit rock bottom, but I clearly never really did because I found a way to dig my way back up and, like I said, until this most recent kind of wake-up call…
The sober-curious movement is so pivotal right now because people that may not necessarily want to be completely sober, but also want to take a break from hard alcohol and maybe they’re not making the best life choices if they’re highly intoxicated, but they don’t want FOMO. They want to still feel like they’re able to be social, and now [with Atypique becoming available] you don’t feel awkward because you have an amazing alternative. Honestly, I’ve tried a few mocktails at restaurants here and there, and they’re good, but not good, like, this good. Atypique has really nailed it on the head.
Besides not drinking, you’ve really overhauled your lifestyle in the past few years.
I was doing a few TV shows – I did Dancing With the Stars and I did RuPaul’s Secret Celebrity Drag Race – sober during all of this, but I wasn’t happy. So, I decided at the end of our DNA tour last May to go on a little self-discovery journey and I drove down to Scottsdale, Arizona. I admitted myself into an intensive outpatient program at a place called The Meadows for 10 weeks and did some real soul-searching.
What I learned and came out of that with is boundaries – I didn’t have those in my life; I let everybody kind of walk all over me – and authenticity, which is a huge one for me. I learned that AJ is a character in a band, which I’m very grateful for, but it’s also a job. It doesn’t define who I am, and Alex kind of got stifled for years. So now, that’s why everything I do solo now is Alexander James, and I want to kind of reintroduce the world to me outside of the group. So far, it’s been a very liberating and an incredible journey. And it’s going to be a lifelong journey. It’s never just going to be, ‘Oh, I’m fixed.’ It’s one day at a time.
With your healthy routine, what’s your diet like?
Yeah, I mean, so I decided to go gluten-free for a year. I’m not a big sugar guy, so that’s not a problem. I went grain-free as well. I love to cook and I do a lot of meal prepping.
Any signature dishes?
I love to cook pasta. I’m a big steak guy. I like to do overnight marinades and I’m starting to finally get into fish. I love sushi, yeah, but I wasn’t ever a big fish guy – you’ll never get me to eat salmon, never gonna happen. I can’t stand salmon. I love like white fish, tilapia, and I’ll season it – being Latin, I like a little spice. I’m just trying to eat clean but I also want to enjoy what I eat. I don’t want to go on one of these extreme diets of keto or this or that. You should be able to enjoy what you’re eating as long as you eat it in good portions and you stay healthy and active.
And what about your fitness?
I work out probably five to six days a week – full circuit training so every single workout is kind of a full body. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are predominantly upper body, and Tuesday and Thursdays are lower body but I still incorporate abs in there, and a little bit of cardio in all my workouts. During the pandemic, I picked up mountain biking with my brother-in-law: he’s taken it to the extreme, he’s doing like 20-foot gaps and jumps. I’m just doing some downhills and some street-riding – at my age, if I fall down, I might break something and not get back up! But I also want to set a good example for my daughters. Living a healthy lifestyle is not just necessarily being sober but also what you take into your body, whether it’s food or working out.
Do you have a self-care routine?
Self-care for me: meditation’s a big thing in the mornings, and a gratitude list, I do pretty much every single day. Reaching out to friends and others that might be struggling – I do daily check-ins with a lot of my sober friends every day and I check in with my sponsor every single day, multiple times a day. I just try to stay focused. I’ve kind of pushed all toxicity out of my life. And even though I’m going through a divorce, my ex-wife and I are still the best of friends and we’re learning our little new modern family and co-parenting. I’m spending as much time with my girls as I possibly can with a little bit of time off that I have here and there because I am still on tour with my buddy Joey Fatone, and then Backstreet’s doing a couple little spot dates this year, and I’ve been here with Atypique.
You’ve long been a big supporter of the LGBTQ+ community. Why do you think it’s more important than ever to be an ally?
You know, unfortunately, there’s always been kind of a pushback ever since – I’m not a big political person, but obviously during the last [US] election, there were a lot of ugly things that surfaced and didn’t go away. You know, if you don’t understand something and you don’t agree with something, it doesn’t mean that you need to hate it. There’s too much hate in the world, there’s too much judgment in the world, and I will always be an ally for the LGBTQ+ community; my publicist is gay, I officiated the wedding for my two best gay friends. I did Drag Race – and I won by the way, yeah, so that’s a little zinger – and I had the greatest time. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
KAREN KWAN is a freelance health, travel and lifestyle writer based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter @healthswellness and on Instagram @healthandswellness.
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