Former WGGB anchor Paul Mueller is back in front of the camera. The news he’s delivering now, though, is very personal.
In April, Mueller abruptly resigned from WGGB after someone posted a video on YouTube of him acting erratically while MC-ing a fund-raising gala. Mueller later admitted to having a “few drinks” before the event–which was held in honor of an 11-year-old boy who hanged himself after being bullied at school–and eventually went public about his battle with alcoholism.
Mueller celebrated seven months of sobriety over the Thanksgiving weekend and he is keeping people updated about his ongoing struggle with regular posts on YouTube.
“Alcoholism is a disease, one which I battle on a day-to-day basis,” Mueller told TVSpy recently via email. “I am so grateful to be alive today because I almost didn’t make it.”
Mueller, who worked as an anchor at WLNE before joining WGGB, has battled alcoholism for much of his career in TV news. While anchoring WGGB’s morning newscast, he used to come home from his shift around 3:00 p.m. and spend the rest of the day drinking. He says that the stress of his job often led him to drink.
“People use for many reasons and for me, one of them was stress, and we all know that stress is abundant in the television news business,” Mueller says. “It is just one of the reasons I would pick up the bottle at the end of a long, hard day but thankfully these days whenever I have a problem in my life, I don’t repeat that insane behavior.”
Here’s Mueller’s latest sobriety update on YouTube…