7 Years 161 days - Fucked Up Fridays7 Years 161 days - Fucked Up Fridays
I'm Quitting Alcohol
Comedian David Boyle reads Nate Skerney’s darkly funny story of dropping out of life, drowning in screens and scavenging cigarette butts, while copping a sharp critique of his own past episodes. The episode mixes harsh honesty and humour to show how far escapism can go before reality bites back.
9:39•23 Oct 2026
Butt Hunting, Screen Time and a Brutal Roast: A Fucked Up Friday Reality Check
Episode Overview
- Isolation and endless screen time can quietly replace work, relationships and purpose without anyone noticing.
- Chasing perfect routines, supplements and self-improvement metrics can become its own form of obsessive escape.
- Psychedelic ‘insights’ and private experiments, like time games on acid, can easily slide into absurdity rather than enlightenment.
- Replacing alcohol with other compulsive behaviours, such as cigarette scavenging, still leaves the core issues untouched.
- Harsh humour and being roasted by others can act as a confronting but useful mirror for self-awareness in recovery.
“"No job, no friends, no contacts, no I cannot account for my days, yes butt hunting."”
Get ready to be moved by real-life accounts of someone staring straight into their own mess and laughing anyway. In this Fucked Up Friday instalment of "I'm Quitting Alcohol", comedian and host David Boyle reads a brutally funny, disturbingly relatable story from Nate Skerney of New Zealand, and cops one of the sharpest roast letters this podcast has seen.
Nate shares how, at 33, he walked away from his "charmed life" and essentially disappeared into his apartment, drowning his days in booze, drugs, porn, news, day trading and endless YouTube, with "months of unbroken screen time" and absolutely nothing to show for it. He skewers his own obsession with supplements, step counts and sun-staring, while drawing eerie parallels with Boyle’s past episodes.
Things take a darker, yet oddly hilarious turn as Nate describes becoming a late-night "butt hunter", scavenging for discarded cigarettes in shopping strips and, eventually, at the international airport. The way he puts it, those soggy cigarettes became "golden nuggets of nicotine" that gave him a twisted sense of purpose. The story ends with him being picked up by federal police, forced to admit under questioning that his days consisted of no job, no friends, and yes – butt hunting.
Boyle’s reaction is half admiration, half wounded pride, as he laughs at being dissected as a buffoon "enacting discreet units of time management" while on acid, and admits, "if you think you're telling me something I'm not fully aware of myself then you're out of your goddamn mind." It’s sharp, honest, and filthy in all the right ways.
If you like your recovery content honest, sweary and uncomfortably close to home, this late-night rant might have you cringing, laughing and quietly asking yourself: how far down the rabbit hole did you go before things had to change?
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