Ireland is a hard society in which to be sober . Giving up alcohol in a country with a drink problem can mean the end of friendships, feeling like an outsider - and being treated like one too.
THEY TRIED to make me go to rehab. I said, "Yes, Yes, Yes." It was late summer 2004 and I was 28 years old. The writing had been on the wall for a year or so previous. Life had become chaotic. I had moved house several times in the space of two years, was in debt to the tune of about €20,000, couldn't be on my own for very long, and was clinging to the remainder of a once-promising media career. I also had a son who took second place to my social life, a widening circle of ex-friends, and a growing sense of fear and self-loathing. Five years after leaving secondary school, I'd gone from being a scholarship student at University College Cork to stealing sausage rolls at the hot food counter at Tesco, just so I could save money for alcohol.
One day, my parents, with whom relations had been strained for several months, called and told me they wanted to see me. I met them at St Finbarr's Hospital in Cork, where the rest of my family had arranged for a treatment counsellor to help them confront my drinking. I sat there silent, as they expressed their concerns. None of them knew me any more. My brothers and sisters had no real relationship with me. They wanted to know if I was willing to do something about it. Would I go back on my own the following week and provide a urine sample? I probably would have tried anything at that stage. I had become "sick and tired of being sick and tired" as the manual says, and I wanted out.
My introduction to alcohol came through the usual routes - the odd bottle of Harp here or sip of Bacardi there. It wasn't that it was encouraged but, like many Irish teenagers, going for a few drinks at 15 or 16 wasn't exactly discouraged either. By the time my late 20s came around, I'd come to rely more and more on alcohol as a means of social and personal interaction. The counsellors pointed to the fact that being the first in my family to pursue academia may have been a trigger. Others felt that becoming a father in my early 20s also had something to do with it, while genetics also played its part. For me, though, I drank because I could, and more often than not because it made me feel better about myself. Simple as that really. It was when it stopped making me feel better that things began to unravel.
On reflection, my addiction was not that particularly severe. I had no health problems, no criminal convictions, and at its height I still had a few people around who were willing to invest their time in me. I didn't need a drink first thing in the morning and could go days, maybe even a week, without it.
It's easy to be carried along by the fact that everyone else seemed to be drinking the same amount.
I never hid bottles under toilets, or behind cupboards, and had an inner voice trying to convince me I was too young to have a drink problem. Sometimes, I wondered if it wasn't all in my head. Perhaps, if I got a nice girlfriend, or change of location, it would all be fine. You start making all sorts of deals with your fading conscience. Maybe you can just cut down. Stick to the weekends or cut out spirits and just drink at home. An alcoholic is someone on a bridge with a brown paper bag and you start trying to convince yourself you're not nearly as bad as those people. In fact, there are probably thousands of people living the same sort of life I led and functioning away, seemingly content. For me, though, it got to a point where alcohol laid siege to my morality and sense of self-worth. I realised this at a young age, leaving plenty of time to start afresh without too much irreparable damage to confront. Others are not so lucky.
WHILE I'M WARY of adding to the canon of rehab stories churned out on an almost weekly basis, the interaction between sobriety and society in 21st century Ireland remains a hush-hush affair. Even this week, when I was asked to discuss my experiences on radio, some friends told me not to do it. I'd be putting my personal sobriety at risk by outing myself in such a public fashion, they argued. If you're sober in Ireland, the general message is to keep it to yourself and not spoil things for the rest of society. The way I look at it, though, is that for years I advanced my dependence on alcohol in a very public forum, whether it was staggering out of a bar mid-afternoon, or turning up at a media launch worse for wear. And now I'm supposed to keep schtum because I don't do any of that any more. Because now I don't fit the stereotype, and perhaps that makes people uncomfortable.
It's been 3½ years since I spat out the hooch and turned my back on the world of liquid libation. I've tried not to allow my sobriety become the dominant theme in my life, and even writing this, I'm conscious that I could become easily stereotyped as the ex-drinker willing to exploit his experience for a story. Three and a half years, and not so much as a Baileys cheesecake has passed my lips. The first few months were the hardest, but now I don't have time to think about going out and getting hammered. I have seen and witnessed a different Ireland. It takes a bit of getting used to, and some situations I'll never be wholly comfortable with. Sometimes, I feel like the character Jim in 28 Days Later, waking up in a post-apocalyptic landscape where I'm the freak. I try not to allow it get to me and stay focused on the positives of sobriety. For instance, last weekend in Dublin, I organised to meet two friends who don't drink or take drugs any more. It was St Patrick's night and, determined to partake in the national day of Irishness, we set ourselves the task of getting a cup of coffee in the city centre after 9pm.
Bewleys duly obliged, but given the night that was in it, they closed at 9.30pm. Business was quiet. Two of us went looking for a coffee in Temple Bar. Practically every coffee machine had been turned off since 6pm. Bar workers shook their heads, looking at us as if we were from a different planet. In many ways we were.
What I've found is that sober socialising in Ireland is not exactly a spectator sport. When I do go out, it gets to a point, usually after 11pm and before midnight, when I make my excuses and leave. Sometimes you're seen as an intrigue - the journalist who doesn't drink. Other times people feel self-conscious around you, and feel like you're judging them purely by virtue of your sobriety. Maybe you are.
My drink of choice these days is a sparkling water. If it's the weekend, I might ask for a dash of lime. You know, push the boat out. If people ask, I normally say I used to drink but was in danger of becoming a cliche, so I knocked it on the head.
I sometimes go months where I don't go to a bar. It's not that I consciously avoid the social scene, just that I have other priorities in my life now. Abuse of alcohol caused me to lose my way, but also allowed me find out who I am. The way I viewed the world had been filtered from the age of 15 onwards through alcohol, so in a very real sense giving it up meant a re-engagement with adolescence. Relationships, conversation, weekends, sex, love and living, all had to be relearned.
For some people, the fact that I'd given up drink meant the natural end of our friendship - if you could call it that. I remember one friend, who took me aside just as I was committing to a 28-day residential treatment programme. We met in a bar at lunchtime in the city, and he'd come up especially from the country to deliver his verdict. His take on it was that once I went in for treatment, it would always be a negative mark on my medical records and go against me in future life. He urged me to reconsider. All I needed was regular work, he said. A nine-to-five and everything would be fine. Needless to say we haven't stayed in touch. There were others who drifted away naturally, and in many cases, I only realised afterwards the extent to which certain friendships were based around alcohol, and how little I had in common with those people once I left that life behind.
THE NATURAL BREAK with many of these associations came in 2004 when I entered the residential treatment programme four weeks before Christmas.
The month away to reassess where my life was going and examine ways I could put it back on track was invaluable. Studies show that only between 2 per cent and 10 per cent of people come out of treatment and remain sober or clean. I was one of the lucky ones. While I have every respect for Alcoholics Anonymous, I determined to stay sober largely on my own accord, and somehow it worked. The key was that I got lucky very quickly. Work opportunities came along within weeks of rehab ending, which enabled me draw a clear link between sobriety and professional fulfilment. It also gave me the space to start afresh with friends and family and allowed me the breathing space to put things right in my personal life. A clear distinction was emerging between life with alcohol and life without. I could pay the rent. My son stayed over. I got a cat, bought a house and went back playing golf. Simple things. My advice to anyone who feels addiction is taking over his or her life is to abandon ego and seek help. There is an alternative life available, it just takes a little while to find it, that's all.
The statistics this week tell their own picture - 60 per cent rise in public order offences in the past five years and a 21 per cent rise in new alcohol treatment cases between 2004 and 2006. But more than that, every social function, family occasion, personal milestone and festive occasion in Ireland is still linked to alcohol. I did some research on Fr Mathew, the leader of the 19th-century temperance movement. It seems our ancestors had similar problems, with every town and village in Ireland in the 1820s held to ransom by bands of marauding drunks. Back then, they drank because of abject poverty, and research into cause and effect of addiction was slight.
Today we should know better, and drink partly because of affluence. Or maybe it goes deeper than that. As a society, oppression seems embedded into the national psyche. First the Brits, then the church, and now, perhaps, the gargle. At the heart of the Irish experience, there is a need to filter the way we experience the world, be it through drink or drugs. Why is that? We're in danger of drinking ourselves into a national stupor. Reality alone is not enough, and issues of self-esteem mixed with our new-found arrogance have created an Ireland on an endless bender.
In other countries, no one can point to the person standing at the bar drinking a sparkling water and say for certain that's the alcoholic. Can the same be said of Ireland?
I used to dread the thought of going on holidays in the early stages of my sobriety. How could you enjoy a Mediterranean sunset without a glass of wine or interact socially with the locals without some form of Dutch courage, I used to think. Now I have a new-found confidence, am constantly fascinated by new cultures and experiences, and have the clarity of mind to process those experiences. I feel genuinely privileged. Relations with my family have never been better; I'm financially secure and personally content. More than that, though, I can look myself in the mirror again. In fact, I quite like what I see.
Having said that, there are still tricky moments, and times when I can feel alienated by Irish society to such an extent that assimilation would appear the easier option. Travelling abroad also brings its own problems. In Tasmania last month, at the other side of the world on a media trip, with any amount of free drink, the thoughts began to creep back. I could just have one final lash at it and no one would know. I wondered if I still had the same tolerance levels I had at the height of my drinking. It's not like you can unravel all the good things in your life in a 24-hour bender, is it? So what harm would it be to have one final hurrah? I often compare it to that scene in the film A Beautiful Mind, when Prof John Nash is attempting to recover from the delusions that have plagued his life. One of them, a little girl, still haunts him, and waits at the end of his college steps, arms outstretched, asking to be allowed back into his life. For me, alcohol is always there with its hands out, asking for one final embrace. I just choose to ignore it.
