Erik Thomson has revealed for the first time that he’s been battling addiction issues for more than a decade. In a new interview with Rae Bonney on her Men’s Health podcast, the former Packed To The Rafters star spoke candidly about what led him to turn to alcohol and other substances.
“I think I really hung my identity on my profession,” the 57-year-old explained. “As long as things were going well in my profession, things were going well for me. If things slowed down, I started slowing down. I started feeling like, ‘Oh, hang on, there’s something wrong with me.’”
UNHEALTHY HABITS
The Scottish-born, New Zealand-Australian father of two admitted that the often-precarious nature of his profession would see him seek solace in a bottle.
“Right now, things are pretty slow career wise,” he said. “There’s a healthy way to manage it and an unhealthy way to manage it. And I’ve done both.
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“The unhealthy way, I’ve had struggles with addiction, I’ve had struggles with alcohol. It’s something I’ve been dealing with. I started to turn and face it in about 2011, so quite a long time, and I’ve had long, long periods of sobriety.
“And I’ve had times where I’ve fallen off the wagon and, you know, I’ve needed to find some solace or some kind of whatever in a drug, in something. I needed to fill that kind of hole or deal with not high-level anxiety but just that low-level constant anxiety,” he said.
Despite a successful career spanning more than three decades, Erik admitted to feeling “insecure”, adding, “it can get under your skin” over a long period of time.
With a young family to provide for, he felt mounting pressure to keep the roles coming in order to put food on the table.
“Sometimes you just need to stop the fear, and that’s when the unhealthy reaching for a bottle or reaching for whatever to have a momentary holiday if you like,” he said. “So I’ve had to do a lot of work on that and I continue to do a lot of work on that, ’cause it’s a lifelong thing.”
GETTING SOBER
Opening up for the first time, while daunting, was important for the actor.
“I haven’t… made a big announcement about anything but when the question’s asked I don’t back away from it,” he explained. “Really high-profile people in my business, people like Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck, they go, ‘Yeah look I’ve had struggles, I am an alcoholic, I have had struggles with addiction,’ and so suddenly some of their behaviours have context.
“They’re also incredibly creative people, they’re also working under a huge amount of pressure – when someone’s putting $150 million on a film and you’re the guy wearing the Batman suit, you walk on set, you fall down and there’s a lot of pressure.”
Erik can pinpoint a period during Packed To The Rafters when he got sober. It was between seasons four and five, and he said it was visible.
“My energy levels were different, you know? You’re dehydrated, you’re puffy, you’re kind of dead behind the eyes, there’s just a lack of presence, you know, you’re just not really there,” he said. Having joined AA, Erik’s recovery is ongoing, as are the intense feelings of shame, loneliness and isolation that come with addiction.
“I had fellowship through AA, and if I had a stumble then one of the things that comes up is shame,” Erik explained, “and shame is a massive thing and that can keep you away and keep you away from asking for help, ’cause you don’t want to lean on anyone anymore.”
Fortunately, he has a strong support network to lean on as, last month, rumours began circulating about the state of Erik’s 25-year marriage to actress and artist Caitlin McDougall. The couple, who are parents to teens Eilish and Magnus, had been living in South Australia, but Erik reportedly relocated to Tasmania late last year.
Compounding rumours, Erik referred to Caitlin as “my wife at the time” during the podcast.
