AJ McLean Opens Up About Substance Abuse During ‘Really Dark Time’ With Backstreet Boys

Entertainment

AJ McLean catapulted to fame as a member of the Backstreet Boys in the late 1990s, but he now regards the latter part of the band’s heyday as a “really dark time,” both personally and professionally.

McLean is among a host of pop musicians who appear in the new Paramount+ documentary “Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands.” In it, the Florida native recalls how the Backstreet Boys began to retreat from the limelight following the release of their 2000 album, “Black & Blue,” as the relationships between him and bandmates Nick Carter, Howie Dorough, Brian Littrell and Kevin Richardson became increasingly strained.

“With the Backstreet Boys, there was never a breakup, but 2001 was a really dark time,” McLean says in the doc, according to People. “We had toured for nine years straight — just go on tour, make an album, go on tour, make an album. And instead of dealing with my real emotions or my feelings, I kind of got caught up in the lifestyle and the partying and the drinking and the drugs.”

Backstreet Boys Brian Littrell, Kevin Richardson, A.J. McLean, Howie Dorough and Nick Carter in 2001.

A turning point came, McLean explains, when he drank alcohol while performing onstage sometime in 2001: “That’s when I even had to know, ‘OK, dude, something’s not right.’”

Later that same year, he checked himself into rehab for the first time. By that point, he says in the film, Carter, Dorough, Littrell and Richardson were “just at their wit’s end” for varying reasons.

Directed by Tamra Davis and released this week, “Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands” is billed in press notes as a “raw, unvarnished” look at “one of pop culture’s most enduring musical movements.”

In addition to the Backstreet Boys and their onetime rivals ’NSync, the documentary also features segments on The Beatles, One Direction, the Jonas Brothers and K-pop group Seventeen.

McLean, now 46 and a father of two, has been candid about his experiences with drug and alcohol addiction. In 2023, he told People he’d been sober for two full years.

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“I’m in the best shape of my life, both mentally, physically, spiritually. I’m actually really happy and I love it, and I don’t want to lose it,” he said at the time. “I want to continue to keep growing, growing with my wife and my kids and myself.”

Watch the trailer for “Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands” below.

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