Newshub national correspondent Patrick Gower's back with another two-part series documentary, this time looking at alcohol.
He looks back at the culture of drinking in New Zealand as well as his own personal relationship with booze.
Photo: Discovery.com
Gower tells Jesse Mulligan it was natural to follow on with a documentary on alcohol, after investigating weed and other drugs.
“Alcohol is a legal drug and when I was making those documentaries, particularly when I was making documentaries on weed, people would always say to me, Paddy you’ve got to make something on alcohol, that is the one doing the most of the harm as everybody knows and that’s the one we really need to look at.
“I’ve been a big drinker and I had a bit of a mental block to doing the documentary on alcohol, I wasn’t really interested in what they were saying.
“But I slowly sort of came around to the idea of making one.”
Check out Jesse Mulligan's previous interviews with Patrick Gower on his docu series:
He believes audiences will be shocked to see the documentary because unlike his previous ones, it’s not a broad investigation.
“It’s a personal story, it’s all about me, it’s all about me and alcohol and it’s all about the problem I’ve got with alcohol and that I’ve had for many, many years.
“If you’re investigating culture and alcohol in New Zealand, I’m a perfect case study. I’ve had the classic kind of Kiwi male upbringing, binge drinking and alcohol locked into my life.”
Although some might find it an uncomfortable topic, he hopes people will see the parallels and reflect on their own habits, he says.
“When you’re my age and you’ve been binge-drinking literally for decades and then you add in drinking at work and then you add in drinking during the lockdown … It’s a huge amount over a week.
“And to get in with a psychologist and sort of show that kind of thing and he really started to tear down a lot of those myths that I had built around myself about how my alcohol was affecting me.
“Hopefully, the documentary can help do that [bust myths on alcohol], not just with individuals, but with New Zealand itself.”
It will also showcase some of the more humiliating aspects of drinking including his own, Gower says.
“Some of what people will see is really shameful, but you know I’ve decided that it happened, it happened on camera and it’s got to go in.”
While he had a chance to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, Gower says he found the intervention of a friend was what really helped him change.
“I feel that there is a massive shift out there and people want to change the way they drink, I can just tell. And [Wednesday] night’s [panel discussion] is going to be tapping into that, is it time for us to make a shift as a country with the way we drink and as individuals.”
Patrick Gower on Booze can be viewed on ThreeNow, and an hour-long panel discussion on alcohol with experts and Gower is set broadcast on Three, 15 June at 8.30pm.
