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Authors: Brian O'Connell
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wholly comfortable walking down the street.
Now, five years on, I’m a homeowner, with a wonderful career, a great family, a beautiful son, a partner, I enjoy conversation and I like me. I actually like me. So again, was I an
alcoholic? I honestly don’t know. But what I do know is that none of the things in my life right now were appearing on the horizon while I was falling out of late-night bars several nights a
week. I know also that living a sober life is not that big a deal. It’s a readjustment, sure, but it’s very doable readjustment if you get a break or two along the way. Having said
that, living in Ireland it’s easy to be carried along by the feeling that everyone else seemed to be drinking the same amount as I was and didn’t have an issue. If you allow those
thoughts to play themselves out, it can be dangerous. Even now when I say to people I don’t drink because it was a problem, most people want to know how much I used to drink. They want to be
able to quantify it in numerical terms. We have an obsession with quantity in Ireland when it comes to alcohol—how many pints? Was it every day? Did you spend much money? What was the most
you ever drank?
But that line of questioning misses the point. It’s the psychological debris that goes along with heavy drinking that wreaks most havoc on the individual. It’s the feeling of
worthlessness, the compromised morality, the loss of self and identity. Those are the things inside the mind of every problem drinker to a greater or lesser extent. I was never one to hide bottles
under toilets or behind cupboards, because I didn’t have to. I lived in a society that encourages you to be upfront about your excessive drinking.
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 that at a young age, leaving plenty time to start afresh without too much irreparable damage to confront. Others are not so lucky.
Much of the time, I 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. When dependence becomes an issue, you start making all sorts of side 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. But there will always be extremes in any illness, and it’s up to the individual which stage you want to identify with.
When my career began to take off once again, as a journalist I was very conscious of speaking publicly about my views on alcohol and my personal experience. There are too many
‘one-person’ journalists in the world without me adding to the genre, I felt. But as time went on I felt compelled to make my views known, to not hide behind the fact that I drank and
now don’t. Although I have been careful not to let 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. I also don’t want to define myself simply by virtue of the fact that I don’t drink.
So 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 twenty-first-century Ireland remains a
hush-hush affair. If you’re sober in Ireland, the general message is to keep it to yourself and not spoil things for the rest of society. My reasons for putting my story down are simple: for
years, I advanced my dependence on alcohol in a very public forum, whether it was staggering out of a bar mid-afternoon or
Now, five years on, I’m a homeowner, with a wonderful career, a great family, a beautiful son, a partner, I enjoy conversation and I like me. I actually like me. So again, was I an
alcoholic? I honestly don’t know. But what I do know is that none of the things in my life right now were appearing on the horizon while I was falling out of late-night bars several nights a
week. I know also that living a sober life is not that big a deal. It’s a readjustment, sure, but it’s very doable readjustment if you get a break or two along the way. Having said
that, living in Ireland it’s easy to be carried along by the feeling that everyone else seemed to be drinking the same amount as I was and didn’t have an issue. If you allow those
thoughts to play themselves out, it can be dangerous. Even now when I say to people I don’t drink because it was a problem, most people want to know how much I used to drink. They want to be
able to quantify it in numerical terms. We have an obsession with quantity in Ireland when it comes to alcohol—how many pints? Was it every day? Did you spend much money? What was the most
you ever drank?
But that line of questioning misses the point. It’s the psychological debris that goes along with heavy drinking that wreaks most havoc on the individual. It’s the feeling of
worthlessness, the compromised morality, the loss of self and identity. Those are the things inside the mind of every problem drinker to a greater or lesser extent. I was never one to hide bottles
under toilets or behind cupboards, because I didn’t have to. I lived in a society that encourages you to be upfront about your excessive drinking.
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 that at a young age, leaving plenty time to start afresh without too much irreparable damage to confront. Others are not so lucky.
Much of the time, I 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. When dependence becomes an issue, you start making all sorts of side 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. But there will always be extremes in any illness, and it’s up to the individual which stage you want to identify with.
When my career began to take off once again, as a journalist I was very conscious of speaking publicly about my views on alcohol and my personal experience. There are too many
‘one-person’ journalists in the world without me adding to the genre, I felt. But as time went on I felt compelled to make my views known, to not hide behind the fact that I drank and
now don’t. Although I have been careful not to let 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. I also don’t want to define myself simply by virtue of the fact that I don’t drink.
So 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 twenty-first-century Ireland remains a
hush-hush affair. If you’re sober in Ireland, the general message is to keep it to yourself and not spoil things for the rest of society. My reasons for putting my story down are simple: for
years, I advanced my dependence on alcohol in a very public forum, whether it was staggering out of a bar mid-afternoon or
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