Willie Nelson 'never expected' to be alive at 93

Willie Nelson has admitted he "never expected" to be alive at 93

The country music icon opened up about his years of substance abuse and revealed he had done "everything wrong" before becoming sober.

In an interview published by The Guardian on Sunday, Willie, 93, admitted he was as surprised as anyone to still be releasing new albums - he published his 79th solo studio album, Dream Chaser, earlier this year - and performing into his nineties, given his wayward younger years.

"The way I was going, I never expected to be here," the 12-time Grammy winner told the outlet. "I don't think anyone expected me to live beyond 21, the way I was going."

The On the Road Again singer admitted that when he gave up drinking and hard drugs in 1978, it was after coming to the realisation he had done "everything wrong".

"I did everything wrong," Willie recalled. "If it was wrong, I did it. And if it was really wrong, I did it twice."

Despite his sobriety from booze, Willie kept smoking cigarettes and marijuana every day until 2018, when ongoing struggles with pneumonia and emphysema led him to stop. Instead, he took up cannabis edibles.

"I had a lung collapse, so I have to be really careful. I do edibles at night," the singer explained.

Willie, whose memoir The Last Leaf is published on Tuesday, added he felt grateful simply to be alive.

"I guess I probably am the last leaf on the tree," he said. "I'm lucky to be here. I've lost a lot of my good friends along the way. You know, Johnny (Cash), Waylon (Jennings) and Kris (Kristofferson). I feel fortunate that I'm still here."

He also revealed he wasn't overly worried about dying, as he believed in reincarnation.

"Well, you know, everybody's gonna die, so it ain't no big deal how long we got," the singer concluded. "We live and we die, and I believe we come back again."