Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard Slams 'Elegantly Wasted Musician' Cliche

Three years ago, Death Cab for Cutie lead singer Ben Gibbard admitted he had a problem.

"I looked at myself and I realized I drink way too f---ing much," he tells Spinner. "I'm 31 or 32 years old and hangovers last all day, and I was overweight and feeling like s---."

With Gibbard's band at the apex of their career, the then-rotund singer best known for his lyrical wit made a decision that it was time to clean up his life. He soon found a replacement for those 2AM whiskey sessions -- running.

"Honestly, it's a lot easier going to work when you're not hungover," Gibbard laughs. "I find that I'm a lot more balanced; the lows and highs are a little bit more even. That doesn't mean you can't explore the lows and the highs, it just means as a human being I don't get overwhelmed with happiness or sadness because I'm wasted."

Now svelte and happily married to actress-singer Zooey Deschanel, Gibbard -- a reflective man by nature -- has had time to ponder the circumstances that led to his uneasy relationship with the bottle.

"Alcohol and drugs [are] such a large part of the experience of being a musician. It's always around and it's always easy to look at somebody who is more f---ed up than you and be like, 'Well, I may have a problem but I'm not as bad as that dude,'" he says. "There's no better industry to pass off your own substance abuse problems on the overindulgence of others. [You can] look at someone who is falling off the stage drunk and say, 'At least I'm not that f---ed up.'"

Gibbard says he believes it's the natural inclination of many young artists to model themselves after their idols, and the glorification of that sex, drugs and rock 'n 'roll archetype leads many young musicians down a destructive path. For him, it was self-realization that pulled him through and, speaking in the wake of Amy Winehouse's tragic death, he hopes others in the industry will one day acknowledge their own issues with substance abuse.

"I mean drinking is fun, it's a lot of fun. But everybody has a certain amount of drinks they can drink in their life -- and I drank almost all of them before I was 31," he says. "I may have a couple more in me but I don't want to risk it.

"In my own life, the elegantly wasted musician is played out and I'm not interested in being that anymore. I'm not interested in the storyline of the tragic figure anymore. I wish I could help people who can't get it together but the reality is that you have to wake up one morning and realize, 'I'm just not going to do this anymore.' That's what I did. I certainly don't think I had as much of a problem as some other some other people do. But in my own way, I did and I woke up and realized I didn't want to feel this way anymore."

Watch Death Cab for Cutie's 'Meet Me on the Equinox' Video