Billy Kemper is a man who doesn’t do things halfway. In order to reach the place he has in surfing, that mindset is a bit of a necessity, but for some people that mindset isn’t reserved just for one thing — it can spill into every aspect of life. And when those other aspects include drugs or booze… well, that generally doesn’t end up in a good place. And in the first episode of a new series, Kemper gets incredibly candid about himself.
“When I use alcohol or I use drugs,” he said, “I would use it to a hundred percent capacity.”
Kemper has been straight sober for a few years now, and he’s not looking back with any sort of regrets. He did, as you likely remember, have a bit of a reality check in Morocco.
“It was some of the best waves I’ve ever seen,” Billy told The Inertia. “Points that I didn’t even know existed. With no one around. It was a dream, and on the last day of the trip when everything seemed to be a fairytale ending to the trip of a lifetime, a small mistake led to a fall in a really critical part of a wave that sent me straight into a rock and just completely destroyed the right side of my body, from my lungs to my pelvis, my quad and my whole knee.”
Suffering an injury like that so far away from home is less than ideal, but looking back on it now, Billy wouldn’t change a thing.
“Having your life up against a wall in a third-world country, 40 hours of flying away from your family while COVID is locking down the borders,” he explained, “it puts everything into a different perspective.”
Now, after making the decision to cut the booze and the drugs out of his life, his focus is on the important things: his family, his friends, his love of surfing. The good things in life – and not the temporary good things.
