Ant is joined by beloved TV host, podcaster and mental health advocate, Osher Günsberg this week. Osher opens up about his journey from addiction to sobriety, coping with 'inescapable' anxiety, and the decision he made that altered the course of his life.
CW: This episode contains discussions of mental ill-health and substance abuse. If this episode raises any issues for you, help is available from Lifeline on 13 11 14 or via their website lifeline.org.au. Drug and alcohol support can be found with the Alcohol and Drug Foundation at adf.org.au or on their hotline 1800 250 015.
LINKS
CREDITS
Host: Ant Middleton
Editor: Adrian Walton
Executive Producer: Anna Henvest
Managing Producer: Elle Beattie
Nova Entertainment acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land on which we recorded this podcast, the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. We pay our respect to Elders past and present.
We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast was produced, the Galligall people of the orination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.
Just a warning that Osher's story contains discussions of mental ill health and addiction. If this episode raises any issues for you, support is available through the links and phone numbers in our show notes.
It's November two thousand and six and we're in the wings of the Sydney Opera House. Andrew ge is about to take the stage to host Australian Idols Ground Finadi. The lights are bright, the stakes are high, the pressure is on. One in four Australian households will tune in to watch him do his things. This is his happy place, the place where he feels most in control. But when the lights go down and he gets off stage, he won't feel so in control. In fact, he's fighting for his life. His career has become his coping mechanism for his battle with OCD.
Drugs and alcohol.
Now as Osher Ginsburg, he sits in front of me a completely different person, a new name, a new approach to life.
I'm Att Middleton.
And this is head Game Today beloved TV host, podcaster, and mental health advocate Osher Ginsburg on making a life worth living. Asher Ginsburg, It's an absolute pleasure to have you on my podcast, head Game.
I'm glad I can be here, mate.
So just take me back to your childhood and who you were, who you thought you were. Did you have a good upbringing, what your parents were like, because it's podcast is about you and we want to get to know the nitty.
I can answer that question in forty nine minutes and then you'll be done. But I'll tell you this short versions you're, you know, military man with a military background, so you know what I'm talking about when I tell you that I'm one of four boys. I'm number two of four boys, and I was raised by two people who know what it is to have authoritarian regimes kick your doorin and people with machine guns say this is ours now. And that happened to my mum when she was just a bit younger than my son. To be honest, it was about three they fled Lithuania with the retreating German army. Because we all know how terrible that was in parts of the Holocaust. The real groom kind of hand to hand brutal massacres happened before they mechanized it. That happened there, and they knew how bad those guys were. But when they found out the Russians were coming over, they're like, fuck, let's get out of here. It was like, that's bad. Some twenty four years later, the same Russians stormed tanks through my dad's city of Prague, and he'd the one to look at that and when well, I better go, and so he was twenty it was twenty four when that happened, and so both my parents had that. They're both doctors, but they both had this idea of, you know, it can all get taken away, and you know a different relationship to authority than some people probably would have had, and most definitely an awareness of it's lovely here in Australia. Yeah, and there's parts of the world like in our lifetimes it's kind of not been that way now. So these people, that's that's what they you know, that's what they grew up with and that's you know, who they were, and they.
Hoped, Hey, could you sense that as a child growing up or did you learn that later, or could you sense that in the.
Knew about my dad. Dad talked about it a lot. He lost family in the Holocaust, and you know, he was alrightly, you know, quite really making sure that us kids knew what it was about. Mum didn't talk about it so much until they'd split up, And it was once Dad had left that Mum started opening up about the things that happened to her and her journey, Like they walked from Colnus down to northern Germany in the middle of winter, they walked and wildly and well, I like to talk about this when when her and her family got to Australia. On the top of the form and I've seen the former says d P displaced persons. There were persons displaced by war. They weren't refugees, they weren't Q jumpers, they weren't asylum seekers. There were people, there were persons who had been displaced through no fault of their own. But look as far as how I was a jumpy kid. I was five, I think when my parents set me off to psychiatrist, and I think it was one in Brisbane at the time, in the late seventies, and I just remember like anxiety being this all encompassing thing that would just overtake me and I was unable to escape it and.
Was quickly asked, you, so you were you were? You had a psychiatrist at the age.
Of five, Like, what's going on with a kid that they gets into a psychiatrist at five?
So I don't know, because nowadays that's sort of like, you know, we hear about it a lot more nowadays and it's more highly accepted now. How how was that perceived back into back back when you were five to how it's perceived now.
I grew up in I don't know how much you know about Australian local politics. I grew up in Joe Bioki's Queensland. So the fact that my last name was Ginsburg was enough. It didn't need to didn't too much more. Topping on top of that cake. It was a pretty weird place, pretty pretty strange place. But yeah, you know, I remember it was it was. It was really weird, and I was always kind of afraid of people and afraid of strangers and two kind of I found it a bit of a salve for that a in you know, because what's anxiety for me at the time. Anxiety was a sense of lack of control and when am I more in control than and I'm on stage? I was eight. I think we were doing a sketch at school. We went to the kind of school where every Friday there'd be an assembly and you had to do a skit on like I don't know, picking up rubbish or you know, whatever you're doing, don't masturbateer. Jesus is always watching you. It was that kind of school. And we did the sketch and I had to walk out there and do the line don't worry it was about picking up rubbish, and I think I said. I walked out and everyone was quiet, and they're all staring at me. It's like three hundred kids or looking at me with faces like cooy carp right, And I think the line was something along the lines of don't committe us in, put it in the bin. Indocrination was deep, but it was like that, and I got a laugh and the choy carp just started and they all just and that was really totally kind of the first high that I ever got, because here I am stay oh yeah, because like I'm now bear in mind. I was eight. I was also in weight watches at eight because my tummy felt it was the anxiety to make my feeling go away, this awful feeling is my body. I would put things in my tummy and I was just quite what's going on with a kid? They get taken awight watches when they're eight, which later on I found out it's very much like a twelve step for fatty. I went through various stages of you know, not great, you know, mental health and you know, various that kind of coupled with not a lot of great fitness and stuff like that. But I always found a great amount of respite and relief in performing, and because there was this beautiful sense of I don't think I was necessarily I was just able to kind of communicate, I think in a different way, express yourself, right, Yeah, And there was yeah, I'm not gonna lie. There was a sense of control. My coping mechanism eventually became my career, but I did come to a point where I had to reassess that and it's very different now. But like, if I think back to some of the biggest things I've ever done, millions of people down the camera lens, literally coast to coast, live across America, just absolute ceremenity, complete calm, when I think about those moments, you know, if I said to someone, I picked yourself speaking in front of hundred people, Now I speak yourself speaking eight hundred people. Now those eight hundred people are in a TV studio and there's twelve cameras in there, and at the end of every one of those cameras is a person except this ten million of them. How do you feel they probably shit themselves for me, It's like, I'm ready, let's go.
Would you say from that moment onwards, from the age of eight, it did not to have knowing what you wanted to do, but you say you felt was hugely in control.
It was I knew what I wanted to do. I knew that it was always going to be something to do with performing. I think my mum came in at the age of five. I grew up in Brisbane, which again it was a big cowtown run by a premiere who was essentially it was like a five tom and I'm standing on the coffee table and we only had three TV channels and most of them the whole day long was the test pattern, which is a great show, went all day, never cancel it, and they classical music underneath it. And Mum came in one day and she found me standing on the coffee table conducting the classical music on the table. There was just something about connecting with other people who are performing and you know, without words, doing this thing together to get an emotional response. I know that now as an adult, but there was just something about it that I just loved. Couple that with a sense of I know what's going to happen. If I'm up here for at least for the next twelve minutes, I know what's going to happen, so I'm just calm. That's the sort of thing that kind of pushed me to want to get better at singing and playing guitar and playing piano and acting and whatever else I was doing to buy me that stage time, to get me that feeling.
And that feeling was pure I am in control. Or was it just like this has giving me a buzz, this is making me feel alive. What was that feeling?
And I still this part I still relate to, like I don't I don't do my job for this anymore, but it's nice when it happens. When you you know, I don't know which high school musical is you were in But when you're standing on stage and you're trying to remember your lines and you're trying to remember the song and the harmony, which isn't the melodies and fuck it up, and you're trying to remember where you have to stand and who have you've got to go, and there's a person there and you're trying to remember make sure you stand in the light and not in the shadow. There really isn't any room left in your brain for right, which is the barrage of noise that goes on in my head most of the time. So when I'm that focused, all that stuff goes away and it's just really lovely.
Yeah, no, I can, I can.
I can relate to that because it's those focused on what you need to do that all the noise distractions. But ultimately that's that's quite rare because normally it's the flip side.
Right, Normally people get up and it's the noise.
It's the distractions that really, you know, that really break them down and stop them from performing. But you you were just so hyper focused and what you need, Yeah, it silenced all the exterior.
Was very lucky. I was very lucky to have that. But there's the same thing goes. You know, if I'm doing a show like I mean, it's not on air at the moment, probably won't ever be again. But a show called the Masts thing. It's very silly show. But I walk out and there's twenty dances. I'm wearing this helmet that looks like I'm in daft punk. It's or LEDs. I can't actually see out of it, so I just have to count my steps and remember I'm walking in a straight line. Walk six steps forward, don't walk seven because right there on that beat there's going to be propane cannons going across in front of me, So don't stand there. But then when the music continues, take four steps forward because now you need to be that point. You can still smell the fumes in the air. Flip the mic without looking, take the helmet off, remember all the dance moves. There's fourteen cameras in the room. Da da da Da Da da da. Now I've got a brain that goes, no problem. I'm fine, And it's just it's just like the ding of a bell at the end of sevasna and the yoga class. That's what it feels like. But when I don't have that amount going on, it can be challenge still, but so I actually work these days. I work quite hard to make sure those noisy bits have something to do. Which is that when is that when the self doubt kicks in? Is that when the habits, that the temptation kicks in, is when you're not in those moments, Because it sounds like pretty much like me, when I'm sat twiddling my thumbs, that's when I get myself in a bit of idle hands. No self doubt. Self doubt's a bit more. I don't know about that. I think, no, it was never really that. I think there's an element. I don't know if it's humorous. I just I just believed, and I think there's got to be an element of it. To anybody that says I am a songwriter or I am an author, or I am the one soldier who's going to go and make a massive TV show about soldiering and overgive a fuck what any of those hard heads are going to say to me, yours or grunts, Here I am winning the leggy fuck yah, Like there's something about you that goes, yes, I am going to do this, and here I go, and that's you. I don't think you can achieve those things in life. If you allow that self doubt to make your decisions, you know, you kind of make those bold moves because you are willing to be with the criticism and will with the critique, because otherwise you'd never leave the house. You wouldn't go No, no, no desk job for me, thank you? No, Like that's never been I don't work with anybody like that. Camera guys, sound guys, anybody. Everyone's like, yep, I'm going to not pursue a career that's solid and you know, has a regular income to support my family. I'm going to swing a boom. You know, these guys work. You know, there's got to be something about you know, certainly in a seasonal industry like mine, you've got to have some amount of confidence or belief.
In when was your big break?
Because you go through you know, you realize that you want to be on stage. This is where you come alive, This is where you're incomplete control. Where did it all start and how did you get your big break?
I always knew I was going to do it. I always had this idea that this is where I was going to go. I played in a lot of bands. I always played music. I still do, and I just knew that there was something. I had something more to give than what was there. And I was a roadie for a long time and I was lugging road cases up and down flights of stairs at three in the morning and the blistering. It was awful. I did that for like it was fun, you know, but I learned a lot. I learned a lot doing that. I think it's really important to do a hard physical job when you're like seventeen eighteen nineteen, so you spend the rest of your life going I'm going to do everything. I can never do that again because it's I've got two hernias and hearing damage out of it. We're hearing age now because my ears are fucked. But when I was doing that, and I started playing in bands quite regularly, and then I was like, there's gotta be something, there's more. I've got more to give than what's here, and so I just literally I just sat down. I wrote handwritten letters to all the radio stations in Brisbone and said, I don't care what it is, I just want to be around it. I just I'll come do anything. I'll turn a light bulb and I don't give a shit. And one of the people that worked at the radio station B one O five, he used to be the bar manager at one of the places that I would lug in and lug out of on a Tuesday, and I used to go get the keys off of him to open the loading dock and he's like, I know that guy, get him in here, and and that was it. I got my first overnight shift like six weeks eight weeks later, so I was just giving out the ICICL cans for a while, and pretty soon I was doing the overnights. And so these jobs don't exist anymore, which is a real drag because I think the great fallacy that people think is that you can go from I'm interested in doing this to a million downloads, Like, no, you're gonna have to be prepared to be shit for quite a while and understand that you're not going to get it straight away. And flight miles really truly is the only way that you can get something into until it's automatic, absolutely, Like I don't know how many times you've disassembled and reassembled a rifle, mate, but if you have to think about it, you're gonna have to do it again. You have to be able to do it while counting a deck of cards right, and then do it perfectly because your hands just have to know what to do instinctively. And then there's a skill to broadcasting. There's a way to you know, truncate the things you want to say, cadence of your voice, operating all the buttons, all that kind of shit. And so I did five years of like between midnight and six Amazon Air playing fucking Sleandyon and Brian Adams and Third Eye Blind and all kinds of other nineties stuff. And then I was like, I'm never going to get a job in the daytime. And one of the daytime jobs dies, so so I sent started sending tapes around the different stations around this country, and the guys in Adelaide were like, oh yeah, let's want to come down. And so I got a job in the daytime and I my girlfriend and it was at the time we're not together anymore. It was years ago. I left her, left my family, of my friends, left everything, and I just got on a plane and went to Adelaide and I said, I've just got to go. I've just got to go. And as I left.
One of the were you following you were you just following that career or were you following your gut where you're you just gut?
It was just I just knew I had to do this thing. I just I couldn't put words into it, like what is follow your gut? Follw your gut is? And what is intuition? It is simply a subconscious reflection of something that you've already seen or experienced or you understand, but you may not you may not be able to put into words. That is all intuition is. You don't have some sort of divinity put through you. It's just your subconscious is able to make decisions quicker than you can think about it cognitively. Right, This stuff happens automatically. And I was just like, Oh, I have to do I have to go, I have to go. And so I got there and within about a month I was like, oh fucking hell, I'm in Adelaide. This is weird town on the edge of a desert, like the whole snowtown thing was going on at that time. I was like, this is fucking strange here. And when I was leaving Brisbane, Darryl is an amazing audio operator as I left. He said, you'll be in Sydney within six months. I was like, what the fuck are you talking about. I don't even know when I'm going to be in six weeks. I just know I have to go now. I just got to go and look mate. Sure enough, about a month later, I was like, I've got to get out of here. This is That's not big enough. I've got to go. I've got to get bigger than this. And so because I've just been in Europe right and for the first time as an adult, and you know, it was I was like, oh my god, the word's bigger than Brisbane. Wow. And so as January, there was an old TV show here called Recovery. It was on Saturday mornings. I don't do that anymore. And I got an email from the same guy who now moved to Sydney and he was working at a cable network down there, and he said, one of the hosts of the afternoon Request show has just left. You should send him a tape. And I was like, well, if we're going to make a tape for that show who was asking about presenters, I'll send Daryl one as well. And so I roll I rode my escape I found the tape the other day and I rode my skateboard around the beach in Adelaide and walked through the park and I did this whole pitch and I posted it. That was it. Two weeks later, I was on a plane to Sydney for an interview. And here's the thing, because I worked at the radio station and I wouldn't want to tell him I would have breached a contract, right, So good night, everybody, see a lot of guys, gonna get him my Kingswood. Fang to the Adelaide airport, get on the plane, fly to Sydney. It was like two and a half hours. Land, get a cab to the restaurant, meet the boss, have a chat for a couple of hours, get back to the you know you sleep at my brother's house for a couple of hours. Then go back to the airport, get back to Adelaide, flight out, rolling at nine to fifteen story a bit like guys, how are you good? I did about two or three times, and then they said, yeah, you got the job. And I went in and resigned and my boss kicked me in the shins twice. And I was doing then. I was doing live TV every afternoon. We were making three hours of television. Five days a week. We're making fifteen hours of live TV every day. So by the time Idol came up, I've been doing this six days a week for nine years.
This is why we're on this podcast, mate, because it's people don't realize they see the tip of the iceberger, you know, and I use that metaphor everything that goes on underneath from you your sleepless nights, so you traveling around the country to you putt you know, being present as in putting out applications, taking opportunities.
It's like people people don't appreciate that.
The amount of effort works sacrifice, right you talk about you know your girlfriend, I'm off to the personal sacrifice that it takes in order to that committed to what you know, to follow what your gut was telling you.
But that's the thing that it took. It took nine years of being kind of shit and just working really harder getting better and having my ego belted to the ground by my bosses who were like, you could be so much better than this, just stop fucking yelling or speak slower, or and me not being such an idiot, not wanting to be told what to do, but eventually realizing, oh, if they tell me what to do, it'll be all right. But I did, honestly, and I squandered a lot of it, man, because I didn't know. Once I got to Sydney, I didn't understand. I didn't know how to handle what was happening. Because once we got on that that really big show, when the things went fucking crazy. Man, and let's.
Talk about that much. So how did you How did that go? So you've done nine years? You know, you just got just got up there and just formed the office like you had been doing. Yeah, here's the thing natural like it''s rair mate.
Well you know, I've got to give that to you.
I appreciate that. But the thing is like, people only ever saw me when I was in that moment a right, It's like we're recording this right before the Olympics start. But you know, like say, for example, if you saw Ariana Titmus walking down the street, you'd be like, holy shit, she can walk because you've only ever seen her swim. Fuck can happen? So you only people only ever saw me when I was in this Oh man, fucking finally, everything's quiet moment, all right. The other twenty three hours it was hard, and that's where things like alcohol and drugs and whatever else started getting into things. To deal with that, I tip from the top. Not a great way to deal with that, and I got very lucky that I didn't die. It got, you know, to the point where you know, unfortunately the story is not a not an uncommon one, and I wish it had a different ending. But I had the same meanning that every person ever tells this story does. Like I had it all and I'd drunk it away. That's exactly what happened, through the magic of you know, divorce and alcoholic decisions and you know, dumb investments with you know.
Flee they take. Let's let's start at the beginning. So you've got Australian idol. You come onto that, Yeah, and you're the face of that. So how did that do you do? You remember sort of coming off of that thinking my whole life is going to change.
No, no, no, I just didn't. I was just holding on with both hands. Were just it was just nuts. You've worked on big TV shows, but you know you mentioned you're a special Forces operator that people don't get that, like my mum was a civy doctor in the military for fifteen years, right, so I was at her base all the time. And people don't understand how much rehearsal goes on in the world of you know, any kind of military operation. They will literally practice it every day for a year so that when the window of opportunity opens, they're in and out in sixteen minutes and seven seconds like a clucking Clooney film.
Right, it's nice and it's nice.
They practice it and practic and practice, practice, practice, press progress, so you know, it's yeah, and you could the whole thing will fall apart of one person isn't in the right place at exactly the right time, and if everything isn't working perfectly all right, And that's the same thing when you're working on this big shows. There's like one hundred and fifteen people and it's it's this perfectly choreographed dance between everybody, and it only works if everyone is doing exactly the best job of their life. And that is amazing to be a part of it. Is I might be one of the people in front of the camera, but there are yasily over one hundred people who are the very best in the business and the only reason that any of us are there because everyone else is there, and that's the only reason those show makes there. And it is just wonderful to be a part of something like that because especially when it's live. No one really does live anymore, be too expensive, but especially when it's live, the stakes are real high.
And I bet you love that though. I bet that's where you were in your you life. If I mess up right now, then it's live is going out millions of people.
That's what makes it so exciting. But there's nothing like it's the most funny you can have with your clothes on. It really is. It's just unbelievable because ultimately, what am I doing? What's my job? You know, I think about it right now, like I have to think about really carefully. What's my job? My job is to make people feel less alone. That's it. My job is. That's it. Whether it's a podcast or the book I write, or you know, any kind of TV that I make, it's to give people a feeling that, oh there's other you know, I'm being connected with here down the lens. And it's something I work really hard at doing. And same with the podcast and something I work hard at doing, you know, vocally at least to give people that sense of connection, of the sense of intimacy, and you know what is entertainment. Ultimately, I don't make anything. I don't make a house of building a house next door to me. These guys get to the end of the day and go, fucking, that's a good wall, boys. It's going to stand for one hundred years. Yes it will. I make waves of an electromagnetic spectrum that get thrown out into the air, never to be seen again. I trade in emotional responses. That's it. I'm there to give an emotional reaction. There's a lot of work that goes into it. And people might think, oh what you literally just read out loud for living, especially if there's an auto keep involved, like if you want to break it right down. Yes, possibly, Yet there are There's definitely ways of language and ways of addressing a camera, and ways of using your voice, and ways of the way you hold your body can change the experience of the person watching that and make them feel closer or further away from you. And I work really hard, and I study that shit, and I watch myself back and I make sure that I get it right because Ultimately, I only get the job if I am the best choice at the time. And I know there are there's me twenty years ago, just knowing I just have to go. That guy is breathing down my neck, man, and I have to be I work really hard to stay the undeniable choice when it comes to these things, all right. I don't accidentally get these jobs. They give these jobs to the best person that because it's a business decision for them too. They want to give it to whoever's going to give us the best value, the best that's who we get. And I worked fucking hard to make sure that I can stay that person and it gives which is nice. It's going to give me something to do when the show's aren't.
And when when did the transition come?
Usher?
From from andrew Gie to usher Ginsburg?
Was that? Was that Australian idol?
Did you think I was kind of around myself?
Yeah, it was kind of twards the end of that. Was towards the end of that, I was, look, I don't believe in an intervention. That's God, all right. I you know, went to a school that tried to tell me there was hell and things like that, and then I you know, I actually went to the Middle East and went hanging a second what what was it? Three hundred and eighty five was when Helen a Constantine stood here and pointed at a hole on the ground. So three hundred and fifty years and hang on with all the posters of this guy in my school. He was a white dude. I don't see any white dudes in Nazareth. What the fuck is this? So yeah, ye, anyway, so I met this guy and we had this kind of interesting conversation. I met this shaman, and I'm an interest. I'm interested, all right, I'm interested. I'm not a convert, but I'm interested. I'm like, Okay, there's something going on here. I don't know if it's what you say it is, but there's definitely something happening here. And so he told me, if I changed my name, I changed my life. And I was like, all right, then if I can't help, can't hurt. And so privately I did it, I think two thousand and nine, and I was like, oh, that's interesting. I think it was more to do with nominative determinism, right. I think it was more to do with how I thought about myself, and certainly once I got sober, because it was a private thing right for a couple of years, but once I got sober, it was like, ah, it really helped me. It really helped me delineate between the two versions of the person that I am. Right, there's a point in the mean. I got sober using a twelve step program, which I thoroughly recommend. It worked for me. It doesn't work for everyone. And there's one of those steps. It's not unlike sitting with you in a in the tear gas tent and you know it's real hard, but you're essentially you. There's a searching and feel. It's moral inventory where you literally look at all the times that you've been pretty shit to yourself and to others. And then you have to tell it's another man and you sit down and you are honest with him and for the first time, some of this stuff is coming out of your mouth like you thought you'd never take. You take it to the grave. But by doing that, what you're doing and he amazingly and it's you know, you're able to do it for other people. I'd like to do it for somebody else. One day they say, cool manrry that for now. I'll carry that until so you don't need to carry it for now. And I was like, but how is anyone going to like me? How am I ever going to fall in love? How can I be with myself for this person that did these things? And he said, like, got good news for your power. It's from California. I got news for your power. You get to live the rest of your life not being that guy anymore. Oh fucking awesome. And so as a way of part of that step, one of those steps is to then go and make an amends and meet the people that you hurt and try, well you can to make it better unless it's going to cause them harm. And so there's a few people that I will never go back into their orbits ever again, for their own safety and their own good, because it wouldn't be right. And yet though I get to be make amends to them by just living my life and making choices that were in the exact opposite direction of the choices I made that were the ones that hurt myself and hurt people like them. And so giving the name gave me an opportunity to change. I looked at the world. But people ask me about this sometimes and I think well. I went to on grade three missus Mss Smith. Miss Smith said goodbye to us at the end of November December, see you next year, kids. And Missus Carrington was there in grade four. Same lady, different clothes, different way of walking through the world. She got married over the summer. There's one person in this world, and one person alone, that calls me a name that nobody else call me, calls me. And because of that way this person calls me that name, it changes who I am as a person and changes what I value. And that name is Dad. So I would put it to you that there's a lot of people that change their names, and a lot of people that will understand what it is I'm talking about when they you know, when they have that name dad, or when they get married, or if they choose to take a partner's name or whatever. Particularly if you're a parent, Mum or Dad. Changes you feel about the world when that name comes your way, not like oh fuck, come on mate, you can wash your own ass, not that. When it's like, what's trust dad to tell Wolf this morning? But he's four and a half, Like, okay, trust is here we go. I'm just trying to tell and so yeah, that's kind of why that was there, and it's been really useful. I thoroughly recommended. I mean, Calvin Broadhouse is not in your playlist, but Snoop Dogg is Osha Jackson is. No, you don't know who that. You know, you don't care, but he's actually on my desk as that's ice Q.
Yeah, and so what does osha mean?
That's the Hebrew words for happiness.
Wow, that's super cool. You talked about the drugs and the alcohol. Was that as worse post or pre Australian idol?
I was, you know, as someone who's struggled with a lot, with anxiety and various other things as well. Yeah, I was yet to discover that stuff. Man. You know, I was offered antidepressants when I was twenty five, when I've been in to Sydney for six months and it was real bad, and I went to go see a doctor and he said, yeah, this is what's going on for you. You need to be on any presence. So I'm like, fuck that, man, I don't mean it with a kind of guy that needs to take anti depressants, No, thank you. I just have a beer like a man.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, and so yeah, like you know what happens to you know, untreated anxiety that you're self medicating with alcohol, It just gets way worse. And so there was this one day about seven years later. I was I was had discovered by this point that physicality and moving my body made my head feel better. But literally I could not outrun it. At some point it gets so bad. I can't outrun it. Nothing I can do it can make my head feel any different. Actually, I was running in the soft sound on BONDI I don't know. I was like there was a bad afternoon. So I was like nine laps in and I was like doing going to do ten k's of soft sand that day, and I felt like someone had grabbed me around the throat and they had my fucking larynx in their hands. I felt someone touching my skin. There was nobody there, and I felt the constriction the touch on my I was like, fuck, this is bad, and I ran up the hill. I got on the phone and I caught my doctor and I went straight to his office and you could hear it in my voice. They stayed open. They let me in late, and I begged, please give me the drugs and they take a while. They would have worked had I not been still drinking, because all I did was just pissed them out. But eventually it got so bad that I had to had to stop. And yeah, there's a I got really like. It wasn't like one particularly massively humongous night. It was just it's just another fucking night, right, But yeah, where but they had been getting progressively worse, and I it had been a long time. I could not remember at all the last day I hadn't drank. It would have been years by that point, and it was no longer a choice for me to drink. It was like as if, for example, you know, we're on fucking deep recon Way in the Philippine jungle and a massive Maussie bites you on the forum and I'll say, man, if you slap that, you'll give away our position, but it's itching so badly you can't and eventually go bang because you can't not hit it, right, And it's that like I didn't want to do this, but I was unable to not do it. It was like so one of our kids as a pen analogy, right, it's not anaphylactic, thankfully, but they can get really sick. Now if I tell you, hey, and you know we're coming over, but one of the kids is a penaalogy, there's no fucking way you'd get any peanuts anywhere near them, right, because you can kill a child. Right. So similarly, with the tiniest amount of a trace element of peanut will kill somebody. So similarly, the tiny a molecule of alcohol touches my body, touches in my tongue, and I'll have an allergic reaction. And that allergic reaction what it will do is it instantly, it stops me. It changes how much I think is a good idea to drink, and also it changes my sense of right and wrong, and I will keep having this allergily. It's like if someone starts breaking out in hives because they brushed up against a plant or something, say, excuse me, can you please just stop breaking out in weltz? They can't. Their body's doing this thing. So I can't stop everything that is happening. I cannot stop that allergic reaction until the alcohol wears off, which is sometimes the next day, sometimes later. And so similarly, like if I have this allergy, if I drink, I break out and funck with like similarly, not everyone's like this.
I love the way that you lay out in layman's terms. It's almost to kick yourself moment you're like, wow, you know, that's that's me the majority of the time.
When I drink. That's me when I do this.
When I do I try a thousand different ways. I tried a thousand different ways to try to make it in it better, but every single it was fun. And then it was fun with problems, and it was just problems and it was unable to stop up rappening, and I just kind of realized that I'm you know, there was that loud sue line, I think, be careful of the direction you're headed. You may just end up there. And I just kind of work up one morning going I'm going to die if I keep doing this, I'll either get arrested or was like, no matter what, it's gonna I can't. Eventually this is I'm going to forget because I was toying. I prescription painkillers were a part of it. Benzos were a part of it. Like I'm going to be that fucking guy that forgot he has already taken his value, you know, And then have a couple more drinks and they go normally take value this time of night, and then ooks tod eighty goodbye, and that's you know, And so I just realized I had to stop, but I couldn't again. I didn't want to be a guy that couldn't drink, So I had to trick my own brain to go, it's cool, man, We're just gonna not drink until you have a responsible relationship with that, all right. But it was only a couple of weeks and that I was like, oh, I can never do that again. Look, I know that if I had a drink today and it's been fourteen years and four months or something like that, if I had a drink today, like, it won't be tomorrow, and it might not be next week, but I can guarantee you by Christmas, everything that I've built is gone. And I'm not willing to risk that. I'm not willing to do that, you know, because I know I can't stop it once it starts.
Do you know what, I think a lot of people should take take this. I say warning it because there's a lot of people that actually go through that, but they go, oh, do you know what, I'm not going to let alcohol control me.
Nothing can control me. And it's like, I love what you just said.
Then you know that if you start drinking, everything that you've built up to now comes crumbling down. Old fucking story mate. It happen so many times I've been there.
It sneaks out. It sneaks out like there was while there, because it sneaks out in other things. Right I was, you know at six fifteen am, I think I'm sitting on the toilet on a fucking mobile betting app, putting a multi on a fucking horse that is going to run in Hong Kong. It's like, what the fuck am I doing? Tying this to a Singaporean table tennis thing? What a like? So the profit, the profiteering of addiction in our country is just so shit house and it's just reprehensible how many billions dollars are made off addiction, and all it is is people who are It's an avoidant behavior, an avoidant behavior trying to because the uncomfortable feelings are just too overwhelming. So I'd rather stimulate myself with this thing and deal with thinking about or work on what happened to me. There are billions of dollars getting taken out of people's grocery budgets on gambling and alcohol in this country, but fucking we don't care. And yet we get upset at people for being shit and you know, shit parents and spending all their money and like, man, fuck you. You know there's so much pain. There's so much pain and there's way better ways to deal with it, but there's so much money being made out of that pain and so much money.
You say you use your career as a coping mechanism to do all this.
Wow, that's that's the time.
Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's very different now, it's very very different now. Like before I got sober, that was it. I just wanted to reach for that moment. But then after getting sober that my man, David, he's very much like man's chop would carry water. Dude, just fucking be a worker amongst workers. You don't have to be the super fucking star. Just be a guy that people can rely on and everything else will work out. And he's right.
I think that's where you build trust, Right, is reliability when you can rely on someone's that's where trust also has belt. Oh, come when I is, dude, he's going to turn up. He's going to give the best. He's going to put one hundred percent in a day. Everything he does, there's no distractions, there's no excuses.
He's going to get on and do it.
But it's also about being there for everybody else, right, the other one hundred and fifteen people that I mentioned, you know, I just I came to the idea of, like, if I can make everyone's day the easiest day they've ever had on set, and if I have them thinking that's the most professional guy I've ever worked with when they leave, then what that will make is that I will have done the very best I could have ever done. But I'm not doing it for me. I'm doing it for them. I'm doing it so I've got my words all done. I know exactly how to get the right reaction out of somebody. I know exactly. I've spoken to the producers about what storylines are following. I know who's you know, triangulated with who. I don't know where the emotion is. I know exactly where the cameras are, I know where the lights are.
You know.
Bang, I hit it and i quit it. I'm in and out. All right, We're not doing it seventeen times because we can't because excuse me, can you just cry once again? Please, because we fucked the line and just pretend you got told you've got broken up with Please? Can't do that. And it takes a lot of work. But if I'm doing it for everybody else on set, including the people who are watching, then that's way better. And it's not about me. But I end up benefiting from it because I end up doing absolutely did you do?
Oh?
And the proof is in the pudding? Because you were nominated for a Golden Logan. Let's talk about you know, I love I love your journey and people don't realize the iceberg effect of what goes on underneath all the hard work sacrifice that we've spoken about.
What was it like geting nominated for me?
Well, to be honestly like, it was an extraordinary It was an extraordinary honor and it was you know again who it is. There was none a hope in ill that they would have ever happened ever had I'm not you know, got much shit together right, no fucking way and trophy or no who. I became to be the person that got nominated for that thing I get to keep forever right, and.
That's nice, Yes, sort of come back full circle.
That has almost proven that Wow, if you if I hadn't done this, and I haven't, you know, changed the way that I am and who I am, then truly at this moment.
To look at that, like to look at people like like I can't compare myself to everyone who I've been nominated with, but you know, to look at people like Blake and macrliff, who I just I just amazing, Julia Morris, unfucking believably talented. Right to be seen in the same category literally as those guys is as good as it gets, right. But I got to tell you that just because I stopped drinking and using and doing all a dumb shit doesn't mean that that guy is still inside going come on, man, he's really good ready, Like that's still there. You just find better ways to deal with it, right, And you know, we talk about practice, We talk about rehearsing, and I sat in We're in my office, right, I sat here and I practiced losing a LOGI because what happens when you lose an award. They've got that fucking shudden for it, a camera up your nostrils. They're looking for the micro expressions of derision and hate, a little thing that flashes across your eyes. Oh he's fucking gutted. No, I didn't want a second of that at all, because anyone that stood there and hold that thing in their hands would have deserved it, and I didn't want them ever think anyway. So I literally sat here at my desk behind me, and I would practice over and over again in my mind, imagining Pamu's black. And then there's a kind of meditation that I like to do. It's called meta. It's called loving kindness meditation, where you truly wish nothing but the best for a person who might be, you know, a bit of a shit in your life. And I would sit there and I would just feel as hard as I could in my body, just the true most amount of incredible, legitimate joy, because I know how hard it would have, how much work it's taken me to get to this. They would have done exactly the same, or more and probably more because they won the fucking thing. It's God damn good on you. You deserve that. And I kept doing it and doing and doing until I just truly connected with how wonderfully proud I was ever every single one of these people. And so sure enough, when Darryl Summers came out and shouted Sonya Creer got on the top of his lungs, I was just I'm so happy for her. That's what I got out of that is Like, it was hard, man. I had to wrestle my ego to the ground because it was like I would my brain would be writing acceptance speeches when I was, you know, riding, I was like, and this is for you, mister Johnson and grade nine, fuck you forever tillaments like that was all happening, man, like it was, and I was like, thanks, buddy. I'd have to literally say to their thoughts, I appreciate that, thank you. I'll take I'll take it as noted, but that's not gonna happenpreciate that. I'll write it down. Thank you. The noise man, oh my god, I've just laugh at it. After a while, I'd be like, that's hilarious. Really are going to go give this is things that seventeen minut long speech by now the orchest John Forman is going to play off. It's not going to happen exactly. But I ended up, you know, we had a great night, and you know, my wife and I danced and then we went to bed and she ate Kung Power Chicken at three in the morning.
There you go.
It doesn't get much better than that, mate, Happy with that? And one final question for I love you and leave you, mate, What is next for you? I know you're writing books, you've got your podcast, your mental health advocate, obviously because of the experience that you've been.
Yeah, it's important that you look. You can't be what you can't see. And you know, I remember when I first started, you know, publicly talking about having experienced psychosis, people just couldn't fucking believe that it came out of my mouth, right because look, I remember how much I've already described. There was self stigma that stopped me from getting help because I didn't want to be the kind of guy that needed help, and self stigma that stopped me from I'd try to stop drinking a lot, but I didn't want to be the guy that had to stop drinking. So the only way that I ever got better was by hearing stories of other people that were once where I was and were now somewhere I wanted to be. And I'm just trying to That's why I started the podcast in twenty thirteen, just to like, I just want to be able to give what was given to me and that's it. And so yeah, I mean, this is this really interesting time in broadcasting, man, where it's either the most terrifying time to be in broadcasting the most amazing time to be in broadcasting. And I'm I have a particular set of skills.
You know, are they useful to people who have multimari in dollar broadcast licenses that they're trying to, you know, create business models around your leveraging for profit?
Probably not? Right now, does that mean that I'm not able to then create something? I mean, there's a few times in my life I don't think I've ever no, I've described one moment. There was another moment that ha and later on. I've always swum out to the boat man always the comment's not going to come by and take you on a fucking whirl wind trip through the galaxy if you're not in the path of the comet. Like, no one's going to come down my front pathway, knock on my front door and say, hey, man, you know that show you always wanted to host, It's ready. There's three hundred people in the studio and there's seventeen cameras and we're ready to go. No, you've got to build it. And that's kind of how it was before Bachelor. I was unemployed. I was forty. I was unemployed, and I created a show and I sold the show to the network and it was in the dating space. And while I was producing that and getting ready to make that, they go, we just pulled the Bachelor. Do you want to do that? Yes?
I do.
And so similarly, like that's again where I am. Now. I'm in the point where I'm like creating the next big TV job. The podcast is fucking great, and I'm able to do some because now I'm no longer how do we put this in the clauses in contracts that me and you wan't? I think the word is disrepute, So I'm able to come. I guess I'm cover some different stuff now, which is nice. Now you're free. So yeah, it's very much as it's an opportunity to you know, the gigs that I've done, and i'd like, you know, I've never been they've never been about me. The shows that I work on, I'm just literally there for exposition, I'm there to lay pipe, man. That's it. Those jobs like I'm not a part of the artwork. I'm not on the side of the bus, you know. I'm just the guy that's there to drop the business and then give the reasons as to why this thing is important and then I fuck off.
You're doing an outstanding job with it, mate, and your career as as certainly led you to these moments.
I appreciate that.
I love it.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you so much for joining me on Headgame. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any of our incredible stories, and leave me a review wherever you're listening.
I'm Att Middleton. Catch you a again next time.
M mhm