Jelly Roll Celebrates Birthday With a Run, Not Cocaine, After Battling Addiction

Singer Jelly Roll no longer turns up on his birthday — at least not in the traditional sense. On his 41st birthday, the rapper-turned-country star did something he once thought was impossible. He laced up his sneakers and went for a run instead of turning to drugs and alcohol. The moment marked a big shift in how Jelly Roll now approaches his health and his celebrations.

In a video posted to Instagram on Dec. 4, Jelly Roll celebrated his birthday mid-run with his friend and endurance athlete Cam Hanes. He used the moment to lay out how far he’s come from his old habits.

“It's my 41st birthday, y'all, and I'm not saying that because I want birthday presents. I'm saying that because I used to drink and do cocaine on my birthday. I used to do codeine and pills on my birthday,” he said in the clip. “Now on my birthday, one of my best friends wakes me up and says, ‘Let's go for a f***ing run, baby.’ Me and [my friend] Cam Hanes getting these miles in this morning, baby. That's what God can do for you in a couple of years, baby.”

Jelly Roll has been open about how deep his addiction issues ran. He’s talked about decades of drug use and arrests that began when he was just 14 years old. He has also admitted it took years to separate alcohol from cocaine because the two became linked in his mind. In a 2023 interview with People, he said even casual drinking once triggered those old patterns.

“I had to learn that you could drink alcohol without doing cocaine. It took me a long time to learn that,” he said. “I've never said that, but that's real. There was a long time where I just assumed, when people told me they drank without doing cocaine, I was like, I thought we only drank to do cocaine.”

That birthday run isn’t a one-off stunt, as the musician has been putting in work for some time. Jelly Roll has said he once weighed over 500 pounds. Since kicking off his serious health journey in late 2022, he’s dropped around 200 pounds, going from roughly 540 lbs to the mid-350s. He’s credited consistent walking and running, time in the sauna and cold plunge, playing basketball and boxing, and working with a nutritionist on a high-protein diet.

He’s also been intentional about doing it naturally. Jelly Roll has said he stayed away from popular weight-loss drugs like Ozempic because he’s worried about side effects that could mess with his voice, per People.