‘Deadliest Catch’ star Capt. Keith: ‘I’ve battled all kinds of demons’

In the first episode of “Deadliest Catch” season 12, Capt. Keith Colburn is supposed to be on his Seattle-based boat, The Wizard, for the new crab season. But Colburn was nowhere to be found. Instead, he was sitting at a bar.

When KIRO Radio’s Don O’Neill saw this, he texted his friend, “Is this reality television or are you OK?”
Colburn told O’Neill that this was neither an act nor something he was proud of.

“I’ve battled a few health issues, I’ve battled some drinking issues, I’ve battled kind of a mid-life crisis and divorce in the last two years,” Colburn said. “… It was one of those days where everything was piling up. I was trying to get the boat out of town and just a lot of things going on. And I took a wrong turn instead of driving back to the boat. Fortunately, my brother is there and he’s a captain so he could get the boat out of town safely. And he got me off the barstool, which is a credit to him. And once you get on the boat you’re fine because it’s a dry environment and you’re good. But I’ve battled all kinds of demons the last couple of years.”

The Discovery Channel show is one of the most popular reality TV shows of all time, but Colburn says it is not make-believe. The lives of the show’s captains are not sugar-coated and the documentary-type film has followed along as Capt. Phil Harris died in 2010 and, recently, Capt. “Sig” Hansen suffered a heart attack.

The show is released months after it’s filmed and Colburn says there are typically two or three instances that make him nervous about seeing it all unfold on TV.

“Everybody thinks hey, you’re on TV, you make good money, you’re a crab fisherman, you’re single and a bachelor and you’ve got the world … well, you know what, it’s not as glamorous as it sounds,” he said. “Being a single dude at this time is not really all that great. I like the stability of having a mate. I don’t have that anymore. My kids are grown up so I’m an open-nester, so it’s just a strange point in my life. But I’ve got my business, I’ve got my boat, both have been really successful. I’ve got my brother to lean on, my kids, and even Florence, my ex, is wonderful. So, you know what, I’m not complaining. I’m doing better than most.”

Colburn said he wasn’t upset that one of his lowest moment played out on TV.

“Any time you see the guys with the cameras in your face, you know that all of a sudden the door is open and they are going to show what they want to show,” he said. “To be honest, I thought they were pretty classy about it. It wasn’t, by any means, my finer moments recovering in the Bering Sea, but we rallied, I rallied, and they showed something that was a pretty intense moment in my life. And I’m not proud of it but, hey, it’s probably one of the reasons why people watch the show because there’s some pretty gnarly intense stuff that happens in people’s lives.”

The new season of the Deadliest Catch airs every Tuesday on the Discovery Channel.

Follow @http://twitter.com/Mynorthwest