The week-long absence of Fred Toucher from 98.5 The Sports Hub has concerned many listeners after social media posts he made on Saturday night. On Friday morning, Toucher made his return to the morning show and explained the situation, which was largely influenced by the course of events he had been faced with in his life. Some of these include a divorce, a cancer scare that prevented him from speaking for five weeks, and other challenges at his job. It led him to reach a dark place and implore his parents to fly to his home to make sure he did not do anything stupid.
“I didn’t have the kids and I didn’t have anybody at my house on Saturday, so I got incredibly, incredibly drunk and I put something [out] that I thought was kind of like dark and cool – like, ‘Hey, it’s time to die,’” Toucher shared. “Then I woke up the next morning and I realized I had scared a lot of people that mean a lot to me.”
Toucher’s Twitter posts on Saturday night included “You ever wish to die” and “I want to die baby.” Many of his colleagues at 98.5 The Sports Hub reached out to Toucher to make sure he was okay. On Sunday morning, Toucher saw the concerned messages and decided to view just what he was promulgating on his social media account, which has since been deleted in its entirety.
“What I did Sunday morning was I said, ‘Okay, I can do this and what’s going to happen is I’m going to look at what I tweeted. I’m going to be embarrassed, and in order to handle the embarrassment, I’ll get drunk again and make this 100 times worse.’”
Recognizing his struggle with alcoholism, Toucher chose to check himself into a detox facility, and ended up spending the next five days within its confines. Throughout the process, he received the help that he needed and will be continuing with therapy and is utilizing an outpatient facility.
“[It was] very unnerving, but it was the only way I could be certain I wasn’t going to drink,” Toucher said. “That was the last straw for me. I can’t be doing that kind of stuff, and regardless of all the stuff that I was going through, I can’t be handling that with alcohol because it just makes stupid decisions. I’m quite lucky, quite frankly, that all I did was put out a stupid tweet.”
Toucher stressed that he had no intention of hurting himself, an aspect of the situation which he states his friends and family were aware of. The difference was that under the influence of alcohol, he knew the predicament could have been a lot worse. He emphasized how he is taking this recovery seriously in an effort not to face problems like this in the future, nor put those he cares about in a distressing situation.
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 (or 800-273-8255) to connect with a trained counselor, or visit the NSPL website.
