Mike Posner Decided to Be ‘Celibate’ After ‘Sex and Porn Distracted’ Him from ‘Pain’: ‘There’s a Lesson’ (Exclusive)

Mike Posner is getting candid about his past struggles.

The singer, whose songs “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” and “Cooler Than Me” launched him to stardom in the early-to-mid 2010s, caught up with PEOPLE to talk about this latest single “Beautiful Day,” and he says that the track is a true reflection of his life now.

“Every album, I’ve just completely switched my entire being based on what felt true to me and what inspired me both musically and spiritually, and it’s been totally worth it,” he says. “So I’m proud that I have these really honest, real snapshots of my life. They’re markers of growth.”

In 2019, while spending six months walking across the country, Posner almost died after he was bitten by a rattlesnake in Colorado.

He then climbed Mount Everest in 2021, and he tells PEOPLE that he also “came close to death” in a “scary moment” during that expedition as well.

“I like goals that you know are going to change who you are. The trophy isn’t the accomplishment. It’s actually the transformation along the way,” he says. “So both those things were so out of the comfort zone of what I was capable of when I set them, and that’s going to change me. That through line of transformation in those larger goals is really exciting.”

For Posner, a crucial part of his personal evolution has consisted of quieter goals, too, including severing his relationship with weed and alcohol. Being able to commit to changing his habits has “snowballed for me in a good way,” he explains.

“I stopped smoking weed, gosh, probably 13 years ago and stopped drinking not too long after that. And you just take more and more layers off. Those things for me, it was a distraction. Those things numbed me to what I was feeling,” he says.

“I would use women. I would use sex to distract myself from how I was feeling. I would masturbate, I would use porn,” he continues. “That’s something maybe people say, ‘Well, is that scary to talk about?’ It’s like, yeah, but every man deals with these things — every single one. And so I think that it gives me an impetus to learn as much as I can in my life.”

In July, the singer shared on social media that he had made the decision to be celibate, and that his decision to abstain from sexual activity forced him to grow so that he could be in a healthy relationship now.

“I was celibate last year for four or five months because I had just got out of a relationship, my last relationship, and I felt a lot of grief come up and there was all this pain. When I feel pain, there’s a lesson there, and I want to learn the lesson,” he says.

“Life [was] telling me to look here. My body didn’t want to feel the pain, so I [would] masturbate to porn or hook up with random women. And I said, ‘I’m not going to do that this time. That’s not going to serve me. It’s not going to serve my community. It’s not going to serve my family.’ So that was that decision to be celibate and to not masturbate — it wasn’t out of any morality. It was just to not distract myself from what I needed to do.”

Posner says he’s been in this new relationship with the person he calls “my love” for about a year now, and he recognizes that “he’s matured a lot and I’ve become a better man. Just as my life has gone on, I’ve leveled up.”

His new song “Beautiful Day” is the culmination of all of his introspection and self-work, and he considers it be the “soundtrack” to his “healing.”

“It’s the song I used and still use because after all this meditation and these crazy trips and all this deep work, my old habits are waiting for me every morning. Lethargy is right there, self-pity is right there, depression’s right there. They’re like, ‘Hey, do you want to hang out with us today?’ And every day I said, ‘Hey, I love you guys, but not today.’ I have to make the decision every day,” he says.

“This is a song I put on in the morning, and it invokes, for me, gratitude and points to a rainbow without claiming that the sun always shines and it makes it feel fun to be alive because it is.”