He was, he says, a normal Kiwi drinker. By that, Espiner means he drank heavily, and often.
"I never drank in the morning. I never showed up to work drunk. I never did any of that cliched stuff," he says. Like most, he drank, mostly, socially. "I was a fairly typical, heavy, binge-drinking dude … if you wrote down how much alcohol [I] drank it wouldn't be that impressive."
The signs, though, were there. Espiner estimates he would, every four to six weeks, drink to the point he couldn't remember anything. "That 'off' switch, I couldn't find it," he says. He tried everything, including sticking to low-alcohol beer, and downloading an app that told him how much he was drinking.
Still, the blackouts happened. "None of it worked."
Looking back, he wonders why no one said anything to him. Espiner believes it's an issue with Aotearoa's drinking culture. "It's still a bit of a taboo subject," he says. "One of the rudest things you can ask someone in New Zealand is: 'How much do you drink?' or say, 'Hey you drank a bit too much last night — what's going on?"
Across 35 years of heavy drinking, no one ever asked Espiner those questions. "And they had plenty of opportunities to."
So, in mid-2019, he asked it himself. Espiner decided he'd had enough. Nearing 50, recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, he woke up with yet another hangover and chose to quit, on the spot. "I knew that morning I wouldn't drink again," he says. He's stuck to that promise for two years, and won't even touch alcohol-free imitation drinks.
Now, he gets asked something else: "Why aren't you drinking?"
It's that question that inspired Espiner to dig a little deeper. In Proof, his new documentary made as part of his role as an investigative journalist at Radio NZ, he tries to find out why he drank so much, for so long, without questioning any of his problematic habits.
To do that, he uses his own personal journey — including swapping embarrassing blackout incidents with fellow teetotaller, the comedian Rhys Mathewson — in an attempt to find out why alcohol plays such a big part in our lives.
What he finds is shocking. In South Auckland, Espiner discovers six bottle stores all within walking distance of each other. He finds others open near schools, often operating from 9am to 11pm, with kids walking past every day. He talks to those who've had issues, those who've suffered because of others who've had issues, and, all the while, opens up about his own battle with the bottle.
It's fair to say Espiner has replaced booze with his new obsession: the alcohol industry. His documentary, made with camera operator and editor Claire Eastham-Farrelly, spends plenty of time with Robert Brewer, an industry lobbyist. Across a tense interview, the pair exchange stern words, backwards glances and debate just how normalised alcohol has become in this country.
Advertising is everywhere you look. "The branding, the marketing, the sports teams, the availability: The cumulative effect of all that is you utterly normalise it in any situation," Espiner says. For proof, Espiner only had to glance out of his RNZ office to see a giant billboard prompting Jack Daniels. "It is everywhere around you," he says. "It's a part of every occasion. That's why it makes it really hard when you stop drinking."
