I WAS DRINKING AT BREAKFAST’
‘The Bachelor’ host reveals his private battle and how he turned his life around
Osher Günsberg might look like he has it all—a successful TV career, a jetsetting lifestyle and a beautiful wife, but behind closed doors the host of The Bachelor franchise has struggled with a toxic mix of alcoholism, depression and anxiety. In an open letter penned for Men’s Health Australia, the 44-year-old detailed his journey towards sobriety in 2010. “When I drink I break out in f--kwit. I thought, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t humiliate the people who love me, I can’t humiliate myself, I can’t torpedo every relationship in my life because I know exactly where this is going to end,’ ” he shared. “There were probably hundreds of mornings that had been the same. This was just the one where I went, ‘I can’t do this again.’ It had got to the point where drinking was no longer a choice.”
Günsberg says he grew to despise himself as he fought the urge to reach for another alcoholic beverage. “I was opening the beer, hating that I was putting it to my mouth. Having a sip, bliss ... for about two seconds. Then [thinking], ‘I’m a piece of shit because I’m drinking at this time of the morning.’ That happened every day.”
As a result, he contacted a friend who had become sober and said, “You know that fellowship of people that you hang out with that helps you stay sober? Could you take me to one of those meetings please?” Günsberg maintains he has not had a drink since that crucial phone call. “The skills I’ve found in sobriety have helped me in my life as a whole. It teaches you to question your automatic thoughts, reprocess them and work very hard on acceptance of a situation, rather than trying so hard to control it. You no longer find yourself having to disconnect and unplug by drinking. You can just be present.”
Following the first season of The Bachelor in 2013, Günsberg faced another personal fight—he experienced a peak in his anxiety after he stopped using his medication. “There was a bunch of stuff going on in my life ... I didn’t know if Bachelor was coming back for a second season so I was technically unemployed, living in another country [the US]. My father got very ill. There was a lot of stress. I was only getting four hours sleep a night. I was really jumpy and weird.”
Things came to a head suddenly. “I looked to see what the weather was doing that day and saw that The New York Times had said, ‘January was the 144th consecutive warmest month on record.’ And my brain just popped,” he explains. “I believed the full and cataclysmic, worst-possible case scenarios of climate change were happening and they were happening today. I believed the sea levels would rise and the forests would burn and society would crumble and it was all going to happen before sunset. I was the only person who knew and I was utterly terrified,” he wrote.
Günsberg dealt with his anxiety the way he usually did when it arose. “I went for a run. I would run 10km every day to Santa Monica pier, touch the pier and run back. I was about a kilometre down when I started experiencing paranoid delusions that were very, very real,” he recalls. “I called my mentor and I said, ‘Mate, this is happening’ and he said, ‘ You need to see a doctor fast.’ He told me the problem with crazy people is they don’t know they’re crazy. ‘ You’re lucky,’ he said, ‘Because you know something’s wrong.’ ... I ended up on two different kinds of anti-psychotics, four different drugs. I put on a kilo a week and it took about a year-and-a-half before I started feeling better.”
In hindsight, Günsberg has seen his breakdown with a silver lining. “I was really lucky—i realised something was happening and knew to call my doctor, and that I did what he told me and I took the f--kin’ drugs. I know a lot of people might be worried about seeing a doctor because they’re worried about the stigma around mental illness. My advice is to take control of what’s happening in your brain, take control of what’s happening to your life. You don’t have to feel this way.”
Fast-forward four years and Günsberg has been able to come off the drugs prescribed. He channels his anxiety into exercise, and is in a good place, mentally and physically. “I get to live,” he said. “I’m really lucky that I’ve found a way to manage the brain I was born with. I get to feel this way and not be on medication. It’s extraordinary.”