Charlie Puth: Sobriety and the “Cringe” Era 

Charlie Puth opens up about quitting alcohol and regretting his “inauthentic” early career years.

Charlie Puth is quitting alcohol

Is it possible to become famous and still be a stranger to yourself? For a decade, Charlie Puth was the man with the perfect pitch and the manufactured “cool-guy” accent.

But behind the chart-topping success of See You Again and We Don’t Talk Anymore was a performer who couldn’t even stand to look at his own reflection.

Now 34, Puth has officially dismantled the facade, starting with a permanent “no” to alcohol and a public apology to his own past.

The Rager That Ended It All 

The turning point didn’t happen in a stadium; it happened in a hotel room at the Greenwich in New York. Just before the launch of his 2022 album, Puth decided to have a “rager”—one final night of wild partying.

He woke up to a two-day hangover and a collection of photos featuring people he didn’t recognize.

“I don’t drink at all. I think it clouds my judgement,” Puth told Rolling Stone. When his party companions wanted to meet for a high-profile “scene-y” breakfast the next morning, Puth saw them eating, turned the other way, and walked back into his solitude.

It was a “screeching halt” at age 30 that signaled the end of his reliance on external validation.

The “Cringe” Confessions 

Puth is refreshingly blunt about his early years in the industry, specifically the period from 2015 to 2022. He describes it as a time of profound inauthenticity.

He admits to putting on fake accents during radio shows and allowing management to invent “bullsh*t stories” to make his songs seem more exciting.

• The Identity Crisis: Puth felt he had to be a “certain way” to stay popular.
• The Label Trap: He followed the advice of “higher-ups” who prioritized marketing optics over personal truth.
• The New Anthem: His upcoming March album, Whatever’s Clever!, features a track titled I Used to Be Cringe, a direct confrontation with his “try-hard” past.

The Clarity of a 34-Year-Old Father-to-Be 

This isn’t just a story about quitting drinking; it’s a story about the reclamation of a mind. Puth’s sobriety is a tactical choice to preserve his judgment.

• Sonic Precision: For a musician whose brain operates on frequencies and perfect pitch, alcohol served as a layer of static. Removing it has allowed a cleaner creative output.
• The New Foundation: With his wife, Brooke Sansone, pregnant with their first child, Puth’s shift toward authenticity is as much about his future family as it is about his music. He is trading the “scene-y” parts of town for a hotel room of his own making.

Embracing the “Unhappy” Past 

Most PR teams tell celebrities to “own” their journey or frame their past as a “necessary evolution.” 

Puth is doing the opposite. He is flat-out calling his past self “cringe.” This is a brilliant, albeit risky, move.

Analysts often think fans want an invincible idol. In reality, fans in the 2020s crave the “unfiltered” truth. By admitting that his 2016 persona was a “cool-guy” mask, Puth is actually making himself more popular with a younger generation that values transparency over polished perfection. He isn’t asking you to like his old music; he’s asking you to trust his new voice.

The Verdict 

When Whatever’s Clever! drops in March, we won’t be hearing the “influenced young man” from 2015.

We’ll be hearing a man who survived the New York rager and chose the quiet hotel room instead. The “cringe” is gone; what remains is a songwriter who finally knows his own accent.