Medium Build’s Nick Carpenter Is Trying to Find Out Who He Really Is Sober — What Happens When the Old Escape Is Gone?
Nick Carpenter, the songwriter behind Medium Build, has just released King of Having Fun. The title sounds almost carefree. The story underneath it is not.
In a new interview published as the album arrived on September 4, Carpenter described the last year and a half as a period of getting sober and trying to figure out who he actually is without the habits that had been helping him cope with pressure, attention and himself.
That is the part of the story I keep coming back to.
We talk about sobriety as if the main event is removing alcohol. Sometimes it is. But once the drinking stops, another question can get much louder:
If I am not the person who escapes this way anymore, who am I supposed to be?
A new album, but not a neat recovery story
King of Having Fun arrived after a period Carpenter has spoken about with unusual openness. In interviews surrounding the record, he has described the collision between touring, recognition, drinking, self-doubt and the realization that getting more of what he thought he wanted was not making him feel more secure.
People’s new profile frames the album around Carpenter “trying to find out who he really is” sober. Atwood Magazine describes the record as something closer to a return to himself than a conventional comeback.
I like that distinction because recovery can become another performance if we are not careful.
There is a temptation to turn sobriety into a clean before-and-after story: chaotic person, dramatic turning point, healthier person, lesson learned.
But Carpenter’s new music does not sound interested in pretending that one decision erased every old pattern. The record keeps looking at approval, loneliness, relationships, ambition, the need to be perceived a certain way and the difference between actually enjoying your life and looking like someone who is enjoying it.
That is much closer to how change usually works.
Alcohol can become part of your identity without you noticing
For some people, drinking is not only a substance. It becomes infrastructure.
It tells you what you do on Friday night. It gives you a script for social situations. It helps you avoid a feeling before you have to name it. It becomes part of your humor, your friendships, your reward system, your rebellion, your confidence, your way of coming down after work, your way of making a bad day disappear for a few hours.
So when someone stops drinking, the empty space can be surprisingly large.
You may know exactly what you are not doing anymore while having no idea what belongs in its place.
This is one reason sobriety can feel disorienting even when it is clearly the right direction. You are not simply removing a behavior. You may be discovering how much of your day, personality and social life had quietly been organized around it.
Our guide Why Calling Yourself Sober Can Feel Different explores that identity shift more directly.
The strange part is that success does not answer the question for you
Carpenter’s story also pushes against a very common fantasy: once the external problem is solved, the internal one will finally calm down.
Get the tour. Get the audience. Get the opportunity. Get the relationship. Get enough recognition. Then you will feel secure.
Except sometimes you get the thing and discover that the old fear came with you.
That matters far beyond musicians.
People do this in recovery too. We can quietly assume that once we reach 30 days, six months, a year, five years — once everyone trusts us again, once work improves, once our family relaxes — we will finally know exactly who we are.
Milestones matter. But they cannot make that decision for us.
A sober life still has to be inhabited.
That means learning what you enjoy without needing it to impress anyone. Learning what your body feels like when you are tired instead of overriding it. Learning which friendships survive honesty. Learning what boredom is asking for. Learning what kind of person you want to be when nobody is applauding the change.
If that question feels familiar, Who Are You Becoming? Thinking About the Future in Sobriety is the Evergreen piece I would read next.
“Having fun” is a more serious recovery question than it sounds
The album title is useful because fun is one of the first things people worry about when they consider sobriety.
Will I still be funny? Will parties be awful? Will everyone else seem boring? Will I become boring?
Those fears can sound trivial next to health, relationships or addiction. They are not trivial. They are questions about belonging and pleasure.
If alcohol has been connected to celebration for years, sober joy may initially feel quieter and less automatic. You may have to relearn it.
Carpenter talks in recent interviews about reconnecting with a younger version of himself who could enjoy ordinary things without constantly evaluating the experience from the outside. That idea sits at the center of the title track and, really, at the center of the record.
It also offers a useful recovery question:
What did you enjoy before enjoyment became something you had to manufacture?
Maybe the answer is music. Driving. Cooking. Being ridiculous with a friend. Building something. Running. Reading. Going somewhere without needing the night to become a story.
None of those things has to be profound. That is partly the point.
And if sobriety sometimes feels flatter than you expected, our guide Can Long-Term Sobriety Still Feel Boring Sometimes? talks about that without pretending every sober day should feel inspiring.
The Reader Mirror: you do not need a finished identity to keep going
Maybe you stopped drinking and people keep asking how good you feel now.
Maybe you do feel better — and also strangely unformed.
Maybe the old version of you was hurting, but at least you knew how that person operated. You knew the rituals. You knew the excuses. You knew which version of yourself appeared after two drinks, six drinks, a bad week or a good night.
Now there is more choice.
Choice can feel liberating. It can also feel like standing in a room after the furniture has been removed.
You do not have to decorate the whole room today.
You do not need a new personality, a perfect morning routine or a grand purpose statement to prove sobriety is working. Sometimes identity is rebuilt through embarrassingly ordinary evidence: the call you return, the meal you make, the boundary you keep, the morning you remember, the friend you show up for, the thing you do because you actually like it.
That may be why Carpenter’s phrase about a “comeback to myself” lands harder than a traditional comeback story.
Recovery does not always reveal a shiny new person.
Sometimes it gives you enough quiet to finally meet the one who was there all along.
OliviaC
Note: This article is based on Nick Carpenter’s public interviews about sobriety, alcohol, mental health and the making of King of Having Fun. It does not diagnose him or present his experience as a universal model of recovery.
Sources
People — Medium Build on trying to find out who he really is sober
Atwood Magazine — Medium Build on King of Having Fun and a “comeback to myself”
Man About Town — Medium Build on sobriety and being present
Universal Music Canada — King of Having Fun album information and media assets
Related Reading
Who Are You Becoming? Thinking About the Future in Sobriety