Tell Me Más: Neysa Blay’s Sobriety Journey Has Transformed Her as a Music Artist

When indie rock musician Neysa Blay sat down to start writing songs for her new album, "Nada es Suficiente," she found herself in an unusual predicament. She'd been sober for nearly a decade at that point, putting considerable distance between her turbulent past and the more placid present. "I'm really good at writing when there's chaos and noise in my head, and when things are kind of bumpy," she says. But now she'd overcome so many of her inner demons. "How do I learn how to write from a good place?" The LP, which drops in May, bridges the gap between her innate rebellious spirit and the more conscientious Blay that has emerged over the past few years. Previous singles, such as the softer "Te Gusta/Me Gusta" and no-nonsense "Quise Que Fueras Tú," toggle between vulnerable and headstrong; she might be rough, but her heart is undoubtedly open. Her newest track, "Úsame," channels 1980s hair metal in its sound and visuals. But to get to where she is now, the budding rock star had to survive a difficult road. Related: Ivy Queen Is Manifesting 2024 to Be Her Year Raised in the beach-friendly town of Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, Blay's adolescence was marked by an inner tug-of-war between the love she has for her hometown and the constraints it imposed not just on her career, but on her as a person. As an openly gay woman who recognized her orientation very early on, she felt hampered by the societal mores of her surroundings. "That created a lot of angst because I didn't understand why. I felt like a part of me had to pretend. The town all of a sudden would become too small for me," she shares. As time passed and she grew into her teenage years, the colors of Cabo Rojo began to take on a different shade. "I remember [being] young, free, happy, fulfilled, and then I started growing up. [And a] sense of doom started falling in," Blay adds. Her only respite then was music, which she began to explore between the ages of 8 and 10 after seeing students who were taking music classes out of an office space her father rented to a local music academy. From there she began to take guitar and singing lessons, which didn't surprise her parents who noticed during her younger years that she had a knack for song. "[They] would play a lot of boleros, and I would love that music," she recalls. "They'd hear me singing along and they'd be like: 'There's so much passion there. There's so much emotion. You're not a 40-year-old chasing a married man.'" As she grew older, the encroaching pressure of how she was expected to live her life was beginning to push her towards volatile spaces. As with many people who go down the same path, Blay found herself searching for ways to abate the anxieties that were overwhelming her. This led to what would become a years-long stretch of substance abuse that would nearly derail her relationship with her family, with partners, and her career dreams. For nearly seven years, Blay spiraled through a life almost entirely dominated by extreme drug and alcohol use. She moved to San Juan, where she found herself in circles that directly and indirectly encouraged her lifestyle. She would attempt to lean into her music but found herself unable to. "Because of my addiction, I wasn't functional, so I couldn't do gigs. I wouldn't show up. I would miss a lot of opportunities." "Because of my addiction, I wasn't functional, so I couldn't do gigs. I wouldn't show up. I would miss a lot of opportunities," she says. She admits to crafting unreasonable ideas about how to become a working artist - ideas spurred by the effects of her vices. "I had a very distorted idea of what [pursuing music] would look like. I thought I could be singing while pumping gas and somebody would discover me. I had a very romanticized fantasy vision of how you do this." Eventually, she hit what she refers to as her "ultimate emotional bottom". "I was very broken. I lost everything. I couldn't keep a job . . . My parents had just kicked me out of the house, and they had stopped any financial help," she says, adding how she had also just gone through a breakup as well. That Christmas she was invited over to her parent's home, where she was given an option: enroll in a wilderness therapy program and try to overcome her addictions. As Blay tells it, she felt "beat" at this point in her life, and accepted, deciding she had nothing else to lose. "That was a Thursday. Saturday, I was flying out." She recognizes what stage of the addiction cycle she was in at this time, and how difficult it was for her loved ones to get her there. "Dealing with an addict, it's like you can't save them, you can't rescue them. But when the time is appropriate, you got to let them hit that bottom," she reflects. "If you take a person that's unwilling into treatment, [the help is] going to go in this way and out this way. You don't want to get b