Mental as Anything: Dai Henwood talks mental health, chemotherapy and living alcohol-free

Dai Henwood has given another brave and honest update in his battle with bowel cancer.

During 2020′s pandemic lockdowns, popular Kiwi comedian Dai Henwood was diagnosed with metastatic bowel cancer. Now he’s revealing how he felt when he was first given the confronting diagnosis and the coping mechanisms he’s used to navigate his cancer battle.

Sitting down with Radio Hauraki’s Angelina Grey on her new podcast, Mental As Anything, Henwood shares that, when he was first told he had cancer, he felt one main emotion: anger.

“I was so angry when I was diagnosed, because I’d watch someone who was obese smoking a ciggy, eating a burger, and I’m like, why am I dealing with this? Sure, I partied, but I know people who partied way harder than me. They’re fine, they’re still partying, still taking drugs and I’d given up alcohol, I’d got my s..t together.”

Dai Henwood (right) on 7 Days with Paul Ego (left) and Jeremy Corbett. Photo / Ana Diaz

He said his outlook changed only when he realised he didn’t know what other people were going through and he needed to deal with anger as he would any other emotion. “It’s just an emotion, and it’s just as valid as happiness, so don’t hide from it, just accept it.” He soon started practising mindfulness and broke down his feelings by thinking of anger as a ball in his stomach.

“If you focus on how your emotions manifest physically, you work through them so much quicker.”

Since his diagnosis, he admits “the whole cancer journey is such a mental trip” and says that, while he tries to stay positive, his experience hasn’t always been plain sailing.

In July he shared that he was undergoing another round of chemotherapy, telling the Alternative Commentary Collective’s Mad Monday rugby league podcast, “I’m four rounds into six rounds of this current one, I’ve just done 18 rounds and it’s b....y tough. And I’m suffering mentally and physically, it’s an absolute shambles.”

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Speaking to Grey, he expands on this, detailing what chemotherapy entails for him. “It’s like trying to get a weed out of a garden path with a sledgehammer. You kill the weed, but you do heaps of damage to the path. Over time, I’ve built up a toolbox that manages to cause as little damage as possible.”

One thing he does is fasting. “I’ll fast for 40 hours going into chemo. So I’ve fasted for 40 hours before I get plugged in because the theory behind it is your healthy cells go into hibernation mode, but a cancer cell can’t go into hibernation mode. So your healthy cell takes on less chemo, whereas cancer cells take on more chemo.”

Henwood says it’s just one of the things that have worked for him physically. As for his mental and emotional health, he’s working on living “in the moment” and slowing down. He does this by focusing on things he can control, like his breathing.

He has always been scared of needles, saying: “I found whenever I got an injection or a blood test, as soon as they’re about to inject me, I breathe in and I’d think I’m a mountain and then when I breathe out I’d think I am strong.” The 7 Days star adds: “Breathing has been my biggest mental health tool.”

It’s proved helpful in more ways than one. After telling fans about his stage 4 bowel cancer diagnosis in January, he said it had travelled to his liver and lungs, resulting in three major lung surgeries – and despite having “quite a bit of my lungs removed”, his breathing had never been better.

“I’ve had a couple of lobes taken out of my lungs and that sort of carry-on, so that’s really helped.”

He also told Grey about his experience with anxiety, noting that, while he is “blessed enough that I haven’t had to deal with serious mental health issues or clinical anxiety”, he has experienced hangxiety – hangover-induced anxiety.

Drinking is popular in the comedy industry – Henwood says it’s the type of industry where you’re “given drinks before work” and, while he and his wife had an “awesome” relationship, the drinking became a “pain point”.

He said he wasn’t an “angry drunk” but rather found he would wake up asking, “What did I say? Oh was I a d..k last night? Oh god.”

“When you’ve been someone who’s, I suppose, numbing themselves to a point with booze, when you give up that, everything comes to the surface, all your emotions and that, and you actually have to deal with them, I guess.”

Since realising this, the comedian has changed his life, trading alcohol for something more “spiritual”, such as meditation, and focusing on his mental health.

“For me, mental health things are being outside, sunshine, which unfortunately we’ve had about two hours of this year,” he quips. “I’m in my 40s so I’ve realised that exercise is not chucking weights around and trying to run marathons. It’s just like a nice walk for an hour.”

Overall, he is continuing his cancer battle with a positive mindset, saying, “Optimism won’t cure me, but pessimism will kill me ... because what if everything worked out?”