Sobriety Myths with the late Eusebius McKaiser

Episode 217

I’m recording this exactly a year after the death Eusebius McKaiser died at the tragically young age of 44.

He was a national treasure for South Africans – an author, a journalist and broadcaster. One of the smartest public intellects in the country he was a fierce defender of truth and justice as many politicians found out to their cost!

He was also a warm and generous friend.So instead of the planned episode I wanted to say a few words about my friend Eusebius and re-release one of the podcast interviews he did for Tribe Sober.

The story starts back in 2001 when I relocated from the UK to SA. I started to watch national tv, trying to get my bearings in this beautiful and complex country. I spotted Eusebius on a talk show and was impressed. I read a couple of his books and listened to him on the radio. I discovered he’d been to Oxford University on a scholarship and had won a global award as a Debating Champion.

I first met him in person more than a decade ago…

Ironically I was drunk at the time!

We were at the Franschhoek Literary Festival where I’d been drinking wine most of the day. This didn’t stop me dragging Long Suffering Husband to the Elephant and Barrel Pub in the evening.

I spotted Eusebius in the bar. He was with deep in conversation and I didn’t want to interrupt.

However husband knew I was a fan and he nudged me towards him – not quite sure what Eusebius thought about this drunken Brit lurching at him but he was very kind.

For obvious reasons I don’t remember much about that conversation but that was the evening that our unlikely but enduring friendship was born.

I finally ditched the booze in 2015 and set up Tribe Sober. Eusebius signed up for our Dry January Challenge and one of the mailers included my Goodbye to Alcohol letter – he asked me to come to Cape Talk and read it out on his Show.

So I did and we got plenty of calls from people who knew they needed to say Goodbye to Alcohol. I’ll put a link to that radio program in the shownotes.

Apart from reading my letter we raised more than R10,000 for Earthchild within 30 minutes. Just like me he loved the work done by NGO Earthchild and for the last 8 years he helped me to fundraise more than R300,000 which enabled more than 1000 underprivileged children to get a year of yoga and lifeskill classes.

I then became a regular on his show and many of our current and past members found us via Eusebius. He loved the work we did at Tribe Sober and often promoted us on his social media.

He came to two of our workshops in Joburg. The first one as a participant and the second one as my co-facilitator.

We looked out for each other - he coached me to be a better speaker on the radio and I convinced him to start his own podcast when he left Cape Talk.

Have a listen to this episode we recorded about 18 months ago

In this Episode

The sober curious movement is growing – we have an endless variety of AF drinks, many online sobriety groups and even our own magazine Hola Sober.
Eusebius believes that people should be free to make “bad choices” in life but did agree with me that education is important. Alcohol is a legal drunk which damages our health and drinkers need to be aware of that.
When tobacco advertising was banned the information about the link with lung cancer was all over the media – if alcohol advertising was banned we would hear a lot more in the media about the link between alcohol and 7 different types of cancer.
Women need to know that drinking more than 3 glasses of wine a week will raise their breast cancer risk by 15%
We tackled a couple of sobriety myths – first of all the myth that we can’t have fun w

Published on 1 year, 6 months ago

Podcast Episode Details

Sobriety Myths with the late Eusebius McKaiser