September, 2021. It’s the first national competition in two years and there’s a man in the lineup who — after his demons almost swallowed him whole – has returned to form. His surfing’s precise, and he looks like the very same Sepp Bruhwiler who broke out of the Canadian surf scene in 2004 and gained international notoriety in surfing’s top publications.
But there’s something different about him. He’s been sober for a full year for the first time since he was 11 years old. And once word starts circulating through the crowd that his newfound mind state is part of what’s fueled his way to the finals, there are more than a few people (myself included) thinking to themselves: “I’ll have what he’s having.”
A few days later, I see Sepp on Tofino’s Chesterman’s Beach – where he grew up as the youngest of four siblings – and I tell him how rad it was to see his trademark style return to the lineup at Cox Bay. He’s stoked on the feedback, sitting in the autumn sunshine while lazily checking the waves.
Canada’s up-and-coming super grom, Reed Platenius, ultimately got the win a few days earlier. But Sepp would’ve taken it had the right wave come his way. And second place ain’t so bad.
“Even though I didn’t win I was just stoked to be able to show redemption,” Sepp told me in a recent interview. “For me I like to show people – especially people struggling – that there’s always hope. You just gotta put your mind to it and be disciplined.”
Sepp hails from the Canada’s most prolific surf family. His older brother Raph has been called “The Godfather of Canadian Surfing.” And their sister, Catherine, helped create a path for Canada’s crop of hyper-talented female surfers. The next generation of Bruhwilers is putting their own stamp on the scene as well. And back in the early 2000s, Sepp’s reputation as a coldwater tube hound with one hell of an air game helped him turn pro when he was 22 years old.
But there was trouble in Sepp’s Tofitian paradise. Even at the height of his career, Sepp was already addicted to alcohol and cocaine. And just as his time in the limelight began to wind down, he became addicted to OxyContin for ten full years, tumbling down a slippery slope, continually increasing his dosage to match his rising tolerance.
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Motivated by his young family, Sepp was ultimately able to wean himself off Oxy by locking himself in the house for three months and muscling his way through the process of withdrawal. After that, he had to contend with his alcohol abuse. The road to recovery was paved with relapses. But at time of writing, he’s been clean for three full years (minus one stumble).
It may seem unusual for an elite action sports athlete to walk the dark road of addiction, but it’s more common than outsiders-looking-in might think. And once you examine a few of traps that athletes fall into, you can see why drugs and alcohol have dug into our communities.
“Timmy Turner and I were sitting at his restaurant in Huntington Beach talking about the trips we used to do together where we’d go up the coast and score insane waves and just get these crazy highs from what we were doing,” recalls Sepp. “Whatever it was, running into bears, getting huge barrels, running into storms on the boat, it was just constant action, action, action and adrenaline.”
“And then you come back from the trip and one day goes by and you’re like, ‘f@$k I just wanna find that adrenaline again,’” he goes on. “A lot of the times where we turned to drugs and alcohol were because we were chasing that same natural high.”
It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to tell you that sports like surfing, snowboarding, mountain biking, BASE jumping and just about anything else that labels you as an “adrenaline junky” are, in their own way, drugs. But science has indeed confirmed that extreme sports come with withdrawal symptoms akin to those that are triggered by substance abuse.
And we can all relate to the compromised relationships, societal disconnect, impulsiveness and other pitfalls that come with plying our crafts. So yeah, action sport athletes are arguably more susceptible to addiction than someone who’s not already hooked on adrenaline and the dopamine flush that comes with it.
“As athletes I think we have a really hard time being calm and relaxed because we’re always chasing that high,” says Sepp. “Just look at what happened to Andy Irons.”
Aside from the way our brains are wired, there are many other factors that get action sports athletes hooked on unnatural highs. We’re often far from home, living away from our families in far-flung locations that have limited support systems. There’s no drug testing to speak of. And hard partying has been woven into both beach and mountain culture over the years.
Après ski is a prime example. There’s a whole industry based on getting tuned up after a day on the slopes. And surfing may give off a clean-living image, but who doesn’t love a couple post-surf beers in the car park? Or transporting cocaine in a hollowed-out surfboard?
So why, with all these factors stacked against us, is sobriety not more common in action sports? Are we partying just to fit in? Or are we all just a bunch of degenerates?
Canadian surfer Peter Devries, who graced many a magazine page alongside Sepp, thinks there’s a shift coming.
“I feel like in action sports, the mentality is changing,” he says. “Also, sobriety and non-alcoholic beers and spirits are becoming very trendy right now, so I feel like that’s helping to shift people’s mentalities in general and that’s something that’s gonna trickle into action sports.”
Last fall, Pete decided to do Sober September with his wife and he’s still going strong into summer.
“I love how I’m feeling,” he adds. “And you know as you age as an athlete you just wanna do everything you can to feel good day in and day out about your body. I know I want to continue to surf at a high level and this is a little part of it.”
Of course it helps that Pete recently became an ambassador for Heineken Zero, so he’s actually an agent of the change he mentioned earlier.
Sobriety is definitely more accepted now than it was when Pete and Sepp were teenagers. Sure, some douchebag may still call you out for not drinking at a party. But that old school mentality is fading as said douchebags age into irrelevance. And with more stories like Sepp’s, Andy’s and countless others coming to the fore, people are more aware of exactly what’s at stake.
“When I was growing up, we didn’t even know that addiction was a thing,” says Sepp. “We were just partying like frickin’ madmen.”
There’s also evidence that young adults are drinking way less than they used to and that the number of college-aged kids that are abstaining completely has gone way up as well.
The kids, as they say, might just be alright.
Sepp has teamed up with fellow surfers and media types like Peter Mel, Chris Burkhard, Ucluelet’s Ryan Cameron and a team of filmmakers to create a documentary film about addiction titled, For the Friends I Lost. They’re looking to make the festival rounds, and will hopefully get it picked up by a distributor along the way.
If nothing else though, the film helps keep Sepp accountable.
“It’s really helped me stay sober because I want to be a man of my word,” explains Sepp.
And surfing – the driving force that’s defined Sepp ever since he was a grom – has played a huge part as well.
“I love surfing,” asserts Sepp. “But I do it more for my mental health than anything because like my mom says: ‘every time you go surf you get baptized.’”
Indeed, beach and mountain culture might enable the darkness within us, but they can also bring out the light. They’re part of the problem and the solution at the same time.
“This is a kind of a hard one to talk about because I feel sorry for addicts that don’t have surfing,” explains Sepp. “To have nature as an outlet to go find those natural highs is better than a hit of drugs because it’s real. Having a whale surface next to you while you’re surfing? That’s real.”
Fleahab – a Santa Cruz-based treatment center spearheaded by Santa Cruz’s Big Wave Pioneer Daryl “Flea” Virostko – is based on those same principles. Flea and his crew were some of the world’s most influential surfers in the early ’90s, but many of them got swallowed by the black hole of addiction. Flea turned things around, and is helping others do the same thing.
“Our focus is to replace addictive drug ‘highs’ with healthy living endorphins,” he says on the center’s website.
It’s easy enough to dismiss these cautionary tales if you’re not into hard drugs like Oxy or Cocaine. But alcohol is just as dangerous as the drugs you score off of dudes in lowered Pontiac Sunfires.
“Alcohol’s the one that got me good,” warns Sepp. “It’s just so accepted.”
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So it’s cool that sobriety is trending, because that means sobriety might actually be cool. After two months of relatively clean livin’, that’s what I keep telling myself. (The irony of me writing this article won’t be lost on anyone who’s ever met me.)
Either way, we always need to keep an eye on the destructive yin to sobriety’s yang – substance abuse – and the effect that it’s having on people around us.
“Yeah just remind people to check on their friends and not write them off because people are so easily written off,” says Sepp when asked what advice he has for the younger generation. “I got written off my whole life, but I still had those strong friends there. They kept me going.”
In other words, check in on your homies.
Friends and family can get us through anything. And if we’re lucky enough to have surfing, snowboarding or any other sport in our lives, we can use the positive side of those forces to make the changes we need.
Our demons won’t know what hit’em.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, or mental health challenges, ask for help. In the U.S., dial or text 988 for mental health emergencies. Call the National Suicide Prevention Line at 1-800-273-TALK. Check for more resources here. In Canada, dial or text 911 for mental health emergencies. And check for more resources here.
