‘All of a sudden, it wasn’t fun anymore’: The moment David Campbell realised he had to quit drinking

As he prepares to mark 10 years of sobriety, David Campbell recalls the incident that pushed him over the edge and saved his family.

On April 12, 2014, David Campbell decided that he’d had enough. Violently ill after a night of drinking and hearing the confusion in the voice of his then-toddler son, he made a choice: it was time to turn away from alcohol.

As he prepares to mark the 10-year milestone of that decision, the TV presenter and entertainer sits down with editor-in-chief Sarrah Le Marquand on Stellar’s podcast Something To Talk About to reflect on how sobriety has strengthened his marriage, made him a more mindful father – and halted the intergenerational cycle in his family’s history.

David Campbell has reflected on his sobriety journey. Picture: Simon Upton for Stellar

Listen to the full interview with David Campbell on Something to Talk About:

Next month, on April 12, you will mark 10 years since you decided to give up alcohol. Why did you make this choice, and when you did, were you expecting that it would be permanent?

My relationship with alcohol from my teens onwards was either binge-y or abstaining completely. I would go through years of never drinking, then I would drink a lot, and then years of not drinking again. Then [my wife] Lisa and I got together, we were having a wonderful start to our marriage. We would drink a bit and, at the same time, I was having great success with an album. You would drink with your band, and then you drink after the show, because you’re putting on these parties in every city you go to. I was putting on an awful amount of weight and sleeping longer and all the stuff you know you shouldn’t be doing, but you’re young, you don’t have kids. So when [son] Leo came along, we were trying to clean up our lives and be healthier. I was still working, going on the road, too, and

I had this feeling of being bored with drinking. All of a sudden it wasn’t fun anymore and it was playing on my mind.

Dan Aykroyd was in town and he came on the show [Today Extra, which Campbell has co-hosted since 2012] to promote [his] Crystal Head vodka. Now, this isn’t Dan Aykroyd’s fault, I need to preface this, it’s a great product. He signed some bottles for us. I was coming up to my holidays. It was our first big family holiday, we were going to Broome. Lisa and I were like, “Should we watch Ghostbusters and have some Crystal Head vodka?” I didn’t have much to drink. Or maybe I lost count, but I wasn’t blackout drunk or anything like that. We went to bed relatively early. Felt good. I woke up the next morning and, as I said, nothing to do with the product, but my body was rejecting it. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get on the plane. I heard Leo, who would have been not even three at the time, say, “Oh, Dad’s not well.” I’m hugging the porcelain bowl, and you’re thinking in your head, no, no, no, I don’t want to be sick. He can’t see this. He can’t register this as a core memory.

I grew up around a lot of alcoholics. I grew up seeing alcohol abused. Like my dad [rock star Jimmy Barnes], we grew up working-class people who don’t have a lot of money. You see domestic violence. You see the problems it causes.

I got on the plane to Broome and when we sat down to lunch I said, “I’m not going to drink anymore. You do you, I am not going to judge you.” And Lisa goes, “I don’t know if I’m ready yet.” And I’m like, “You don’t have to be ready, but just to let you know, that was the moment for me.” A month later and she’s like, “I’m out.” So we had our clarity together. I actually didn’t know if it was going to be permanent. Well, in my heart I did.

Read the full interview with David Campbell in Stellar. Picture: Simon Upton for Stellar

Picture: Simon Upton for Stellar

And then, in 2015, came the headline-making moment when you revealed you had given up alcohol one year earlier. This happened during a panel discussion on the Today show, in a segment hosted by Karl Stefanovic. Along with your colleague and future Today Extra co-host Sylvia Jeffreys, I was sitting next to you on the panel that morning and, to this day, I don’t know if you knew you were going to go public.

I didn’t. It didn’t feel significant and I didn’t want to be the story. It just came out of me. I was so scared of the reaction. And then I wrote the column [an opinion piece published two days later by News Corp, publisher of Stellar, titled “My family’s alcoholism stops with me” which went viral] and what was astounding about that admission was I put it up on Facebook and it was probably one of the biggest reactions I’ve ever had in my life.

There were so many men who reached out to me saying, “How did you do it?” Or “I’m six days sober”, or “I’m 30 years sober”. And women, too, saying, “It was the best decision I ever made.”

Something got planted in my mind that day because four years ago, I climbed aboard what we now call the sober curious movement. Sometimes if I’m out for dinner, I can see people tense up a little bit as though I’m going to frown with disapproval if they have a couple of wines – even though, like you, I hold no judgement. Do you still encounter some defensiveness?

Not as much as I used to. This is a very showbiz thing to say but the first Logies is the hardest, you know what I mean [laughs]? Or the first big event that you might have, your first Christmas party. Whatever it is in your world is always going to be the hardest first, because people go, “If you want to toast something at a wedding, how are you going to toast them?” I’m like, “With my water.” I think it’s not defensiveness, people are curious. I certainly don’t stand here as the spokesperson of sobriety with my history, but I think it’s great that people ask those questions and discuss these things and want to get into the nitty-gritty about it.

My kids talk about drinking all the time: “What’s champagne like?” I’m like, “It’s bubbly. You can have it when you’re old enough.” They’re probably going to drink and they’ll talk to me about it and hopefully we can have a nice open discussion about the history in our family and why I chose [sobriety].

Picture: Simon Upton for Stellar

You and Lisa have been married for 15 years. Is she still not drinking?

Yeah, she’s sober and it’s the best decision we’ve both made for our relationship. We’re

two type-A personalities so when we did celebrate and drink, we were the first at the party, last to leave. Even though that doesn’t make us blind drunk, we just love to be around people and we love to live life fully. But that does have a negative side effect, where you’re too tired the next day. And that’s where, in the first year of our relationship, we went to a couples therapist. Lisa had come out from England after three weeks of knowing me. We’d fallen madly in love, and we were then going out on tour with a band and getting to know each other again. It was a lot of pressure and we went to couples therapy to go, how can we do this better? How can we learn to not fight and/or fight better and know how we can listen to each other?

I so value her. She’s away at the moment so I could get emotional but she’s changed my world view. She’s changed who I am as a person in the best way. She’s helped me see me for who I am and I can be myself with her. I can be vulnerable with her, and I can cry all the time with her if I want to. She’s my best friend.

You and Lisa have three children, nine-year-old twins Billy and Betty, and Leo, who is now 13. You interviewed your father Jimmy Barnes for Stellar back in 2016 when he released his memoir Working Class Boy, wherein he was so candid about his experience, and about his father also being an alcoholic. In terms of breaking that intergenerational cycle, do you see a day where you will say to Leo, “You were really the catalyst for this decision”?

Wow. I hadn’t thought about that, but I’m going to have to say that, and no pressure to him. He’s going to find out if he Googles it, and probably when this article comes out. You’ve got to have these conversations, like talking about porn and sex and all those sorts of things. Sooner rather than later is probably the best time. It’s a beautiful thing that he’s the reason. In a way I can say to him, “You saved me. You saved your mum and I.”

You’re a singer, a musical-theatre performer, a full-time television presenter [as co-host of Today Extra on the Nine Network every weekday at 9am], you moonlight as a radio presenter, and you’ve been a Stellar columnist since we launched. How would you characterise yourself? What’s the day job?

Often I say to people that I’m in media, so I think that covers a lot of bases whether it’s social [media], music, TV, whatever. I’ve been doing gigs and really finding my joy of singing again. For a while, there was a lot going on. It was work, then Covid, and I felt insecure about whether I should be out there. Then I started booking a run of dates, and then Mahalia [Campbell’s sister Mahalia Barnes] got on-board with me and we were doing shows together and just having a blast. Then I was doing these concerts with the MSO [Melbourne Symphony Orchestra], performing with friends again and I’m like, this is it, isn’t it? It’s supposed to be fun.

But then I’ll do something and I’ll post it on social media and, because I’ve been doing TV for 10 years, there’s a generation of people who are like, “Oh, you sing? You’ve got a good voice.” I’m like, “Oh, I’ve worked on it for a couple of decades now, yeah.” So I try not to have too much ego about where I sit. I’m just happy to still be in the industry and doing what I love. Sometimes people say, “I see you on TV” and maybe they just want to see me sing one of my dad’s songs – I’m cool with all of it.

You turned 50 last year. There have already been so many fundamental changes in your life this past decade – is there anything you want to tackle in the foreseeable future?

Turning 50 kind of sneaks up on you and those couple of months or weeks going into it, I really started to have some existential crises of like, “Oh my God, I’m 50” and then “I’ve got kids and what’s going on” and like, “Lisa, what’s happening?” And she’s like, “You’ll be fine.” Now for me it’s all about, I want another 50. I’m greedy. It’s about life and that’s why I like chasing a healthier path – I’m greedy. I want to see all my kids grow up, and I want to see their kids, and I want to be mobile, and I want to have as agile a mind as I can. I always want to improve for Lisa. I want to make sure that she’s always happy, surprised and satisfied with me. And for me, challenging myself. There are always things you have to shake off from the past. As you get to a certain age, you go, “Is that still there? I’ve got to fix that.”

Listen to the full interview with David Campbell on Stellar’s podcast Something to Talk About:

Originally published as ‘All of a sudden, it wasn’t fun anymore’: The moment David Campbell realised he had to quit drinking