Joe Jonas talks sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll

Now that the Jonas Brothers have broken up, Joe Jonas is tossing his Disney-manufactured image in the trash.

In a first-person essay in this week's New York magazine, the 24-year-old talks about everything from smoking pot (his first time was with Miley Cyrus and ex Demi Lovato) to losing his virginity at the age of 20.

"The first time I smoked weed was with Demi and Miley," he said. "I must have been 17 or 18. They kept saying, "Try it! Try it!" so I gave it a shot, and it was all right. I don't even smoke weed that often anymore."

A big part of the goody-goody image projected by Joe and bandmate brothers Kevin Jonas and Nick Jonas came from their decision to wear promise rings, which signified waiting until marriage to have sex.

"The topic that dominated news coverage of us for a long time was the whole promise-ring thing," Joe said. "We couldn’t escape it. It started when I was really young -- I must have been 10 or 11. There’s a program people do in some churches called True Love Waits, where you wait for marriage to have sex. Kevin and I decided to join -- Nick tried it later."

"Because of our age, because of Disney, because of those rings, there were so many things throughout our career that we had to sugarcoat," he added.

Joe said the guys decided to take their rings off a few years ago, and that he lost his virginity at the age of 20 (He didn't say who the gal was, but he was dating "Twilight" star Ashley Greene when he was that age).

"I lost my virginity when I was 20. I did other stuff before then, but I was sexually active at 20. I’m glad I waited for the right person, because you look back and you go, 'That girl was batshit crazy. I’m glad I didn’t go there,'" he said.

On the topic of exes, Joe said he kept his relationships pretty quiet  "out of respect for my fans, because we had a large female audience, and I didn’t want to rub my relationships in their faces. Some of the girls I dated just didn’t get that."

One high-profile relationship Joe had was with fellow Disney star Demi Lovato, which became difficult because of her issues with drugs.

"I really got to know her and got to see the ins and outs of what she was struggling with, like drug abuse," he said. "I felt like I needed to take care of her, but at the same time I was living a lie, because I wasn’t happy but felt like I had to stay in it for her, because she needed help. I couldn’t express any of that, of course, because I had a brand to protect." """'""

"It was an insane situation to be in," he continued. "Things kept building up, and Demi ended up punching a girl in the face on a plane, because she thought the girl was blaming her for something. Everybody gasped, and the girl just started bleeding. That’s when her team and her family told her, 'You need to go into rehab.'"

Now, with the Jonas Brothers dunzo, Joe said he has "control of my life."

"We hit a place where we just weren’t jelling on the same things, and we didn’t want to become a band that was worried about the fact that people didn’t understand how cool we were," he said of the October breakup. "The whole situation was breaking us up as a family, and we ultimately felt like we were holding each other back."

Today, he's "going back to the drawing board," and is "genuinely excited because now I can go back to the studio with those people who I used to work with."

"I don't have to rely on anyone else's opinion, whether good or bad, and hear them say, 'No, no, you can't go write with them. That's too weird for us.' Because weird works. Look at Lorde."