Osher Gunsberg's life beyond the spotlight and red roses 🌹

This is back in twenty fifteen, and because I'd never seen an episode of the show, I had no idea who Osher was. I know, even perhaps silly I was, but there I was. I remember vividly. We had a photo shoot tuxedos, roses, board shorts, tops off, the works for all of the promotional stuff to launch the show before it went to air. You know, this is Sam Wood,

Australia's new Bachelor, blah blah blah. Anyway, Osha rocked up to the photo shoot and I was like, I'm not sure when she's going to get here, But why's Andrew g here?

deep thinking, intelligent, raw individual. So we do touch on some sensitive topics in today's episode, so that's not something you necessarily want to delve into. Perhaps go back and listen to another episode. But today's guest on The Woodlife is my good friend Osha Gunsberg, and that'll be coming out next and then we're going to finish on a high note by celebrating some of the beautiful wins that

have been sent in by you, our wood lifelesseners. I was sure it's always been an absolute pleasure of mind to chat with you, and I mean that completely sincerely. I just wanted to start, I guess by thanking you because when I was on the show The Bachelor, which unbelievably was eight years ago when we first met. Yeah, I was. There were there were moments I think I had it okay, but there were definitely moments where I was drowning and overwhelmed and you were an absolute life

raft me. And it was for a number of reasons.

and it was a very fresh relationship for you. But you're also then seeing me fall for the girl who had a daughter, and that was very sort of strange twist of fate, not that anyone on the screen that was going on, but retrospectively looking back, I was like, that was really interesting, how it could really help me with all of that stuff that was going on in such a crazy environment, but also just the crazy bubble of television. You being one of Australia's biggest TV success stories.

Everyone would know you from The Bachelor or the Mass Singer, or the voice on Bondi Rescue or one of your incredible podcasts or a myriad of other things that you've done, and you were just so calm, so careing. Oh wait, you know you always knew when to come and when not to come. I feel like you were like, yeah, he knows that I'm there for him, but I'm not going to pester through him. He's kind of got to work this shit out for himself. At the same time, it's not my job to hold his hand. And it

was incredibly helpful in a very unique stressful situation. So thank you, my friend.

back before for if you don't like it. Like, there's a sense of lasting happiness that is only unlocked in our brains when we help another person, when we're of service to somebody, And there was just something about you're not the only man I've seen go on that adventure, and some men I've seen going on the adventure are

more open to what they might learn about themselves. But there was just something about I think the base of where you came from was I know that it is only in challenging myself and putting myself where I get the stress response. That's when growth happens. And I have to be willing to be with the discomfort of that, and you were, you know, you had to face it, and it was amazing to watch. And it's what I

talk about all the time. So like one of the great privileges of my entire career was watching you go through that and seeing another man do that, because it's very rare. You know, men on television generally they don't they don't ever talk about anything but sport, you know, or how being the boss. You know, they don't ever. And so to watch you go through that and then to bear witness to the extraordinary life that you and

Sana have created is wonderful. And now I remember, actually there was a night you came over to a flat and you sat at a table with me and and Audrey and Georgia, who at that point we weren't engaged at that point. She was just my girlfriend's kid. She's now my step order. And it was beautiful. It was really nice. It was really nice to have you around. And yeah, it was lovely. It was really lovely. I was really extraord I was so happy that Audrey came

into my life. And there was something about dating. I mean, the fact is if you're dating, if you're in your forties or late thirties and you're dating, you probably date someone with a kid, like that's going to happen. And the because of that, Audrey had this extraordinary barrier of like, you may think that you might just kind of this is just a kiss in the cuddle and you move back to America, but no, I'm not interested in anything that doesn't because I've got this kid to think about.

And that really made me pull my socks up and maybe go, oh, it made me face some shit and and I'm really I'm really grateful for it. But yeah, it was wonderful and it's beautiful watching watching how you've taken the ball and run with it, and that you and Snares are in such a marvelous place. It must be a noisy house, though, Jesus man, it's so nice. A lot of children, it's so nisy.

in the park screaming at dragons you can't see. You might have an idea of what alcoholics look like they're sitting out front of a horse racing or betting place with a brown bag, you know in the day. You may have an idea of what someone with a gambling addiction, or you know, those sorts of things it looks like

and it's certainly not you, and certainly not your friends. Well, twice a week, certainly for a couple of years there definitely when I was working with you, people were watching on Wednesday and Thursday night, someone who was dealing with episodes of psychosis that manifested as paranoid delusions. Someone who was on two different kinds of antipsychotics and SSRI and an NSRI, someone that was dealing with suicidal idiation passive and active, a recovering alcoholic, someone with OCD. And I've

since been discovered that someone with ADHD. And you know, there I was counting flowers on your tally. Complex mental illness can look like a lot of things, and with treatment can be really pretty good for some people. I

got quite lucky, you know. And similarly, you know, if you think, oh, there's no way I'd let my kids watch any video made by a recovering you know, alcoholic, somebod who used to drink and use all the time, Well, anytime you let your kids watch the mask singer and leave the room, that's what's happening, because you know, here I am. But it's all in a commitment to treatment and a commitment to literally waking up every day going, I reckon, I can get it just a little bit better.

I reckon, I can figure a little bit more out here, and being curious as to how you can get there. I did not realize. I did not know that life could exist without alcohol until I had heard stories of other people who were where I was and were now somewhere I wanted to be.

I'll bring my gum boots. It was on right, and that's just how it was, and that's how I learned to drink, and that's how you know, I was taking it to very extreme levels, but it was very similar to the kind of drinking going on around me. I think the first time, I think I was about twenty two.

My girlfriend at the time. I remember being like lying in her lap with you know, she was brushing o quite long hair at the time, but she's brushing vomit covered hair out of my mouth as I'm lying cross leging at a lap, but I'm trying to focus on her. Her face is doing, you know, just like flicking back and forth because my muscles in my eyeballs don't work properly. And she's like, maybe you want to have a think about why you keep doing this to yourself. I was like,

I don't have a problem anyway. Cut to like ten years later, and I'm trying to stop, and I can't. I realize that it's bad every time I'm drinking. The way it starts is like at first it's fun, and then it's fun with problems, and then the time of fun and the time of problem starts to get quite out of whack, and then it's just problems no matter what, no matter how many different ways to try to do it. I try to stop, I can't. I get maybe four weeks,

maybe six weeks. I think it was the most of went, and then just like a duckt to water on back like ten years, then two hours kind of drinking, and then at one point I was about it was about twenty twen. It's actually sin five days from now. Now we're thirteen years ago years. I just woke up one morning and the night before I hadn't been any bigger

or smaller than any of the other nights. It's just another night where I was just a blurish, belligerent drunk, vomiting on myself, you know, frightening strangers, being inappropriate to people, humiliating myself, humilating people around me, humiliating the people who cared about me. And I was like, I just can't do that again. I can't. It's gonna it's the same every single time. I think there's allowed to quote, be careful of the direction you're heading. You may just end

up there. It's very clear. And also there was there was a complications there. I busted my mcl a couple of months back, so you know, I was in America at the time, and so vicodin was a part of it, so painkillers were like it was a horrible situation. I as realized I had to stop, but I was out of ideas. I didn't know how to do it. I knew I had to, but I had no idea how it could exist. I grew up drinking in Queensland, right, so it was protty fairly similar to tas made you drinking.

And there was a bloke that I knew who I'd met him, not long not long ago, like maybe I don't know, six weeks or or ten weeks before that. And he was beautiful. He was about as tall as you're taller than me, so as tall as you, big handlebar, mustache, gigantic forearms look like Tom of Finland. If any of your listeners know who Tom of Finland is, don't google that with kids in the room. And he was a photographer, an extraordinarily talented fashion photography who get cover shots all

the time. Like he was very very good life of the party. And I was like, how do you do that? Like you don't drink? How does And I called him up and I said, hey, man, I need help. Can you take me to one of those meetings how you go to? He's like yeah, sure, and off we went to you know, a fellowship I shall say, of people that are interested in not drinking, and it all just clicked. It took a while for me to kind of figure

out that it had to happen. But once I did, and once I kind of accepted that I wasn't able to do it like other people, I got to work and it was a hearing story of people that, like I said, people who were where I wanted to be and had been where I was. Was hearing their stories that gave me the hope to go, Okay, well, I guess it can happen. I'll just do what they tell me because I all my ideas just keep ending me

up here. I'll just need some more ideas here. And literally it's just my guy who still guides me to this day. He just said, listen, power, if just get to bed, he says, power, because San Diego. Power. Just get to bed tonight. Put your head on the pillow, without drinking or using, without causing harm to anybody else, helping somebody, getting help at yourself, if you need to being of service to someone, and if you make a mistake, doing your best to clean it up as quick as

you can. If you do that every day, you've done this perfectly. And that's literally all I've done every day. That's it. Some days it's an hour at a time, some days it's five minutes a time. Some days it's a breath of the time. I got through all that hell on earth of being quite sick in my head without drinking like that. If I can do that like that's something to be said for that. If I I had been drinking during that, Sam would be dead.

phone with the doctor like I'm not. I don't mess around with that stuff anymore because I know that I will end up in a place where I'm now unable to make clear decisions. And that's I don't that's never going to happen again.

and stay prepared for that. Similarly, I don't accidentally have good mental health. I do stuff every day diligently. I take my meads when I take them. I've got alarms in my phone to make sure I do it. I do my writing work, I do the meditation, I exercise. But the life I get because of that SAM is

bigger than I couldn't have imagined. I end up living this very deliberate life rather than a reactive life, and it gives me a sense of agency and a sense of like I will be able to cope with whatever comes, because you know, there's so much organization in my day, and there's so much a deliberate action in a direction in my day that the life I have is beyond anything I could have possibly imagined. And I wouldn't trade

it for I wouldn't trade it for anything. I mean the side effects of the medications that I had been on. I'm on very different meds to when I met you. That caused a lot of weight gain, and it was it was because it messes with my insulin response and I was putting on about a kilo a week. It was really hard.

do the work. I needed. You know, in the same way that if you were trying to help a client do a pull up so they had never done a pull up, there's probably people listening, I've never done a pull up or a chin up, and they think I can never do it. I guarantee you, if Sam Wood puts enough exercise bands on a chin up bar and puts them under your feet, you'll be able to get your chin over the bar. Hooray, You've done a chin up. Similarly,

that's what the meds were. The meds were like the exercise band that helped me complete the movement right, which is the thinking and the reframing and all the cognitive work that I needed to do. And once I gained the strength to rewire those pathways, slowly, slowly, slowly, we take the assistance away, slowly, slowly to make sure that I can cope, and eventually those neural pathways become more automatic and more permanent, and eventually, you know, I got

to come right off those really heavy ones. I'm still on two different kinds of meds that I take every day, but they work really well, and the side effect profiles really quite low, and the amount of weight gain is it's all right, you know, you know, I don't think I'm going to be on the cover of a mag again and a but that'll be okay.

you'd still go through it. Because if we you've come to today, do you generally think.

nuggets here? What's some interesting things I can learn about this? What's some new things I can find out about the world, about the way I can handle the world here? If I start to see things from that aspect, well, now I have something to do. Now I have different possibilities. Now, once we're curious about a situation, particularly about a challenging situation,

now we have possibility. Now we have options, because if we are just in fear or resistance, we've got one option no, and guess where that leaves us exactly in that space. We can't move from there. We stay there, and that's not a powerful place to be at all. Nobody likes to feel that way permanently. So if we go, well, maybe or I prefer it if it wasn't. But what else can I do with this, you know, try to

kind of flex that thinking just a little bit. I'm so grateful for all the stuff that's happened to me, sam as hard as it was, as painful as it was, you know, because it all happened, and it gave me a gift every time. If I didn't get diagnosed with PTSD after September eleven and when I was twenty six, I wouldn't have learned just because I think it doesn't make it true, particularly around when it comes to other people's emotions. I didn't, I wouldn't have learned that feelings

aren't fat. I wouldn't have learned that stuff. I would have gone on with my wife going, I feel that this person's being an asshole, so therefore they are the asshole. Not right, what if it's me? Oh, it is me?

You know. I learned that stuff, and then having that really gave me the equipment that I needed when it came time to get sober, because there's all these things in my head going, just do it, just do it, just do it, and then me going, I appreciate that that thought's happening, but that thought it nothing I have to act on okay, all right, And all that stuff really helped them when I got when I got really sick, I was able to look at these cataclysmic thoughts and

I had to get into meditation to do it and go wow, every one of them is like to be able to separate and watch my own thoughts, go wow, that's really weird. I should see a doctor. That's bad. I should see somebody. I can't get out of this. I need some help. And I wouldn't be where I was were it not for all of that, you know. So and right now life is amazing. It's incredible today. You know, I try to win for Aswim in the ocean with my wife. I had a lovely lunch with her.

You know. Wolf was a cheeky little bastard this morning and super fun. And g wants to run me through a Matt Pillart's class later on because she's a pilates instructor. Now and so how is how is dad life?

It wasn't long. I think it was maybe about six weeks maybe less, from when Order and I were like seeing each other quite seriously and I was living with them for on a semi permanent basis, and I just woke up one day and she'd gone from me my girlfriend's kid. Too. Oh, if it meant that I would die, I would push you out of the way of an oncoming guard like and I wouldn't even think about it, because you are now the most important thing in the world, and which for a selfish prick like me, is a

big deal. And look the thing with you know, as as Georgia got older and that you know, you know, come on as a step dad. Here I am with as eleven year old, with a good month of parenting experience. I made a lot of a lot of mistakes, and I tried really hard, and I didn't get it right all the time, but I tried really hard to get it as right as I could, and tried to learn from each moment when it comes to you know, Wolf,

you know, it's incredible watching Audrey go through that. And the thing about the most amazing thing about parenting is if you're open to it, you have an opportunity to you have an opportunity to rewrite yourself. Okay, because the thing that was interesting, like we only generally really intimately know the way our own mother mothers. Okay, true, And then as we gave a chance to do it ourselves, we have a chance to maybe not repeat the patterns that we have written within us. Now they will show

up for something happen. Someone will drop something, I'll throw something and break something, and you'll hear a thing fly out of your mouth that you heard your dad say in the eighties and be like, oh man, and he probably heard his dad say it in the sixties or the fifties, like that doesn't belong here, but here I am saying it anyway. I'm repeating. It's called rippling. Is the effect that I'm repeating this value. This, you know, this, this adherence to a value that is probably archaic and

doesn't belong here. What else can I do here? And what can I learn about myself here? And that's the very hardest part about parenting. Is not the sleep deprivation or the fact that you can be cranky for ages with your partner who you love dearly, or that money's a problem because there's less people working or anything. It is the fact that the children they never do what you tell them, but they will do everything that you show them.

make sure that you do that. We're going to go to a bit of an upswing and really celebrate some positivity that's happening within our Woodife community next. As I've heard from so many of you with your brilliant wins so far in twenty twenty three, and I cannot wait to celebrate them.