Authors: Brian O'Connell
Wasted (12 page)
——
Following my visits to the bar in Tipperary I was beginning to wonder if we were indeed moving towards a more café-orientated culture than we sometimes give ourselves
credit for. It was clear that rural bars have changed significantly in Ireland and some are having to adapt and change with the times. So could another type of social experience take root here?
What about a bar without beer, for instance? It would never work, would it? From the outside of the Carrig Rua Hotel in Dunfanaghy, County Donegal, everything seemed normal enough. The site is at
the end of the once bustling fishing port, offering commanding views of the surrounding area, including Killahoey Strand, where a
US
Air Force Flying Fortress landed in 1943
after running out of fuel. Across the bay is Horn Head, a natural heritage area, offering the village protection from the worst of the Atlantic seas. The 23-bed hotel, which had been closed for a
number of years, is now expanding in line with the majestic views around. Like many former fishing ports, the town was slow to adapt its business model from trawlers to tourists. While Dunfanaghy
has always attracted a certain number of regional tourists, its proximity to Donegal Airport (40 kilometres away) is expected to see the town attract far more foreign visitors and re-ignite
commercial activity in the area.
Against this background, Ann Sweeney took over the running of the Carrig Rua Hotel in 2008, having already owned and operated a successful restaurant, bar and shop in the town. Two days into her
new venture, though, Gardaí raided the premises and removed all alcoholic stock. Delays in transferring the bar licence from the previous owners to the new management meant that the hotel
had been operating without a bar licence since its opening. With 46 employees, mostly local, working at the hotel, and hefty weekly outgoings, things looked bleak for Ann and her staff. Surely a
hotel without alcohol would be doomed to failure in a country where the average annual consumption of pure alcohol per person is 13.4 litres, well above the
EU
average. Or
would it?
Ann Sweeney takes up the story: ‘We opened up the bar on the understanding that the licence was close to being transferred, and that turned out not to be the case at all.
‘On Monday 7 July, at 7.15 p.m., two sergeants and two big vans came and all our alcohol was confiscated from the premises. Many of the staff here had worked for me previously and after
the raid I was sitting here thinking, “What am I going to do?”—some of these staff had given up jobs to come and work for me.’ After two days’ meditation, Ann says she
came upon an idea. ‘I have a bar nearby, and following government legislation in relation to drink-driving and smoking, the rural pub trade has been decimated. So I thought, why not look at
things another way and perhaps there is now a market for an entirely different experience.’
And so, on 17 July 2008 the Carrig Rua Hotel opened its doors as Ireland’s first alcohol-free hotel, inviting Kerry Councillor Michael Healy-Rae to do the honours. At the opening, he
remarked that there was ‘much talk and little real action in Ireland in addressing the problem of alcohol abuse’. The Gardaí, he said, ‘have unwittingly provided an
opportunity to demonstrate if we are mature enough to be comfortable with the idea of a hotel that provides good quality accommodation and food without having to have an endless supply of booze on
tap for its patrons’.
So how does it all work out? Visiting last year, hotel staff were at pains to talk up the positives of working in a dry hotel. Raucous singsongs have been replaced with one-on-one life-coaching
sessions, nature walks are being promoted and encouraged, and afternoon salsa classes are growing in numbers, even among staff.
In the bar itself, I found manager Stephen Ferry from Letterkenny training a new staff member on how to make the perfect skinny latte, while a newly installed Slush Puppie machine whirred away
in one corner. Herbal teas have replaced high-end whiskeys and smoothies are the new shots. Several alcohol-free beers are on offer, as well as red, white and rosé wines. Ginger beer and
homemade lemonade inhabit the fridges. For the non-drinker, it’s sort of like going back into the garden and giving Adam a proper heads-up before he bites into the apple. The only problem,
though, is that it was 7.40 p.m. on a Tuesday night and the place was empty.
‘A pregnant lady was in earlier,’ said Mr Ferry. ‘She liked the fact that she could come into a bar where she didn’t feel under pressure to take a drink. She could sit
here with her kids and not see people drinking or falling around the place.’ With homemade pastries dotted along the counter, the bar had now rebranded itself as a continental-style
café, open from nine in the morning until 10 at night. Diners in the hotel restaurant were allowed to bring wine with them, albeit with a hefty €7.50 corkage fee per bottle. ‘The
response so far has been very good,’ said Ferry. ‘Often when people go to a restaurant they are stuck with what [is] on the wine list, but here in this hotel they can bring their own.
Of course, we do have some customers who come into the bar and ask for alcohol and there is a look of fright on their faces when I have to say we have none.’
As the evening progressed, locals began to wander into the bar area, attracted by well-known folk singer Roy Arbuckle from Derry, who set up on stage. One couple, Séamus and Betty
McQuade, ordered a large pot of tea and sat near the door. Both were teetotallers, and had been coming to the area for over 30 years. ‘We never drank or smoked in our lives,’ says
Séamus, ‘and it’s enjoyable to come in to a bar like this without the hassle of people knocking glasses against you and being rowdy and noisy. I’ve nothing against drink,
but it can get out of hand. Even though people can bring wine in here, it’s not the same as people drinking spirits. That’s when things really get out of hand.’
The couple say it’s hard to get tea after 9 p.m. in most bars, so the Carrig Rua duly obliges. One local, with a foot in both camps, arrives with a bottle of wine in one hand and a bottle
of Ballygowan in another. Others arrive in the bar after dinner, including Charlie and Kate Hill, finishing off their bottle of wine before switching to alcohol-free rosé for the rest of the
evening. Once the band starts, the atmosphere is not unlike any other hotel bar, and whilst the staff are not run off their feet, they’re not exactly standing around either. By 10 p.m., the
bar has filled up, and during a break, the singer Roy Arbuckle remarks that he could get used to playing to a sober crowd. ‘It’s not that unusual,’ he says. ‘The great folk
tradition of the sixties in New York came out of coffee houses. I suppose in our culture we have grown up over generations thinking that pubs are patrons of the arts, such is the link between
traditional music and drink. In terms of atmosphere, I prefer when it is sober—people are more inclined to be attentive to the music rather than drink and themselves.’
Next morning, Ann Sweeney breezed through the lobby, taking names for a music workshop she had organised for that afternoon. There are plans to open children’s playrooms and an old-style
games room at the back of the hotel and at the time she was also considering hiring more staff; such has been the demand since opening.
‘It’s amazing, we will have five waiters in the bar today as well as a manager and they will be flat out doing coffees and latte and herbal teas all day,’ she says. ‘Our
takings are roughly the same.’ She says she has taken enquiries from
AA
groups and alcohol treatment centres looking to book in. Three weeks in, and the hotel has yet
to take out a single advert. The premises has proven especially popular with young families, who would not normally be allowed have their children on a licensed premises after 9 p.m., while the
evolving range of events on offer in the bar helps keep everyone occupied.
She’s now not pushed on getting her licence back. If things continue to develop, she may not need it. ‘The ironic thing’, she says, en route to meet a lady about reiki classes,
‘is that over the bank holiday weekend, the café here in the hotel took in double what my licensed premises around the corner took in. So why change a successful business model?’
I thought I’d seen the future, folks, and it was looking fizzy.
Two months after my visit, during a local jazz festival, Ann Sweeney learned that her licence had been renewed. That same day she restocked her shelves—the very same day! I called her
months later to get an update on how business was going and she informed me. I felt cheated. What about all the
AA
groups she said were booked in? All the families and
non-drinkers delighted with the premises and a chance to socialise without alcohol? Alas, as soon as the authorities gave the official okay, Ireland’s first booze-free bar was no more. It
hardly stood a chance. While Sweeney may now claim that the ‘bar is more of a café with the emphasis on food and music’, it is in essence no different to any other hotel bar in
Ireland. So much for new beginnings.
‘We were faced with a dilemma when the licence returned. I still believe we would have been able to continue, but perhaps not in the off-season. Now that we have our licence back, next
summer I don’t intend to take the alcohol out of the bar. It wouldn’t make economical sense,’ Sweeney said when we spoke. The publicity from being Ireland’s first booze-free
bar, for a short time at least, will do the hotel no harm in the long run.
For non-drinkers, the revolution, it seems, will not be soberised.
F
or me it’s the shame and stigma that is attached to addiction in this country is actually the thing that stunts
the growth of people recovering. Addiction thrives on secrecy and Ireland is still a secret society. I don’t think that’s changed in the recent past, and I think the issue of
addiction is absolutely huge. You might get more people aware of it, because of the celebrity rehab culture, where celebrities are talking very openly about their experience. This might lead to
a little more discussion about addiction issues, but not much.
It’s very hard to know, also, with that rehab culture, about how genuine it is. I would say most people are looking for something, and addiction plays a huge role in
their lives and it’s not for me to judge. I still think in this country the shame and stigma attached to addiction stop people from asking for help. The first step in addiction is
awareness and then asking for help, saying, ‘Where can I go to sort this out?
I have a huge passion about addiction and addiction in Ireland, to such an extent that I set up a foundation called the
RISE
foundation, which stands
for ‘recovery in a safe environment’. Our first project is for family members. In my experience of talking openly about it in an interview or on the radio, I would be inundated with
people from families looking for help. So that is why I decided to set up the foundation.
The person in addiction is in a complete haze, and not really present. So the question is, how do you get them to really want to change? In a way, you can educate the family
members about how to handle someone in their family who has addiction. For me, that’s the first step.
I wouldn’t have considered myself an alcoholic. I do know now, but at the time I wouldn’t. My drinking wasn’t spirits. So my idea of an alcoholic, which would
be most people’s idea of an alcoholic, was someone sitting in the pub all day or the wino out on the street, or someone who had to have a drink first thing in the morning. That
wasn’t the way it was for me. My drinking would start with wine about six in the evening and I could have maybe a bottle and a half of wine a night. At the weekend I might go out and
drink pints. To me, though, that wasn’t alcoholism—I mightn’t even have a bottle and a half every night. It might be four nights a week.
My attitude would have been, I’m sitting at home and not hurting anybody or not out in a pub making a show of myself. Whereas in reality, I would have been falling into
bed most nights and the effect that would have had on my life was huge. For a start, I would have had a hangover next morning and be grumpy and narky and preoccupied. I wasn’t present. I
wasn’t present to my family. I was getting through the day but dying for six o’ clock when I was making the dinner and having my glass of wine. I’d be really looking forward
to it and sometimes it could start earlier.
Nobody had any idea. Everyone was shocked when I said I needed to go for help. My husband knew something wasn’t quite right as he wasn’t a drinker. I do believe
there are different stages of alcoholism and I might have been at the middle stage or even before that. People might find that hard to take because if they acknowledge you have a problem, then
they have to look at their own drinking and say, ‘What does that make me?!’
Or you would get the type of response—‘Jaysus, she was no worse than any of the rest of us!’
What changed my life is that I read an article by a journalist. I think it was in the
Irish Times
, some time back in the 1980s. Her pattern was like me except she was
into the gin and tonics and then would go and do a day’s work. She would come home and have a bottle of wine with dinner and then a little more gin and tonic and go to bed.
She couldn’t understand why she couldn’t stop and eventually went for help. That was a bit like me. I tried to stop and couldn’t and I couldn’t
understand that. After two weeks of being off it, I nearly lost my mind. I started to sneak it, and these were all things that made me rethink.
When I read the article there was a number at the end, so I thought I’d go and have a chat with them and get assessed. I was completely convinced they would say to me,
‘You just need to cut down on your drink.’ But then I went to the counsellor, I sat down and was really honest. I would have had blackouts and so on at that time. She said to me,
really casually and non-judgmental, ‘There is no doubt in my mind that you are an alcoholic and you need to come here.’
It was an outpatient treatment centre and it was for three nights a week, so it was a huge eye-opener for me. When I stopped drinking the career took off. But I was always
dabbling in prescription tablets, so really there would be times I was worse than others but I never thought it was a problem. Because it was prescription drugs the doctor gave them to me, so
it was all right. It was only in later years, when I had to give up the tablets also, that I realised you could swap over addictions. So I ended up in a treatment centre later on and it was
more for the tablets. I would actually say, for me, my primary addiction was prescription tablets because it was harder for me to come off them. It was easy for me to come off the drink. And I
still get a longing for the tablets.
They were better than alcohol in many ways because you could function and still have a conversation with people and they wouldn’t know. But the side effects destroy your
life and the consequences are horrendous. They were a lot worse for me than alcohol and the ups and downs can make you very suicidal.
I wouldn’t have had a career if I was drinking. I really do feel my career took off the minute I stopped drinking. Before I went for treatment I had been asked to join a
band and I had to go and tell them, ‘I have to go for this treatment.’ They said they would wait for me and when I came off treatment I joined the band and it went from there. The
hardest thing I ever had to do was to walk on stage without a drink.
There is this Irish thing that we can drink and it brings out the creative side within. I don’t agree with that, personally. I’m not saying it doesn’t work
for some people. But I’d love to see those people without drink and see what comes out if they did the right amount of work on themselves and did all the spiritual and soul stuff.
For me I hadn’t done much stage work beforehand, and I had great support because it was with my family and there was a great support. It was scary walking on stage,
though, as it would be for anybody. I knew I wanted to do it so that’s what kept my legs walking on the stage. The fact that I could stop drinking gave me great courage—if I could
do that I could do anything.
I think it’s scary in this country as we are drowned in addiction. I’m petrified as to the consequences of what is going on, really. That is why I really want to
try and do something to look at the shame and stigma attached to addiction. I get up on stage every night and tell my story. I don’t have any shame around the fact I’m in recovery;
it’s not a big deal for me, it’s just a disease, and I’m working through it.
So I feel more people need to talk about it, not about the fact that they go into rehab—they need to talk about what it was like and what it felt like. And yes, I will
speak openly about it if I feel it can help one person in this country.
If I am successful in setting up a treatment centre it will be an education treatment centre for families about addiction. This is so that anybody who wants to learn about
addiction can come and learn that this is what addiction is. It’d about telling people, there is a format that can work and this is how you need to look at it.
The research I have done shows that the cost to the taxpayer of one child in untreated addiction is £800,000 in one addict’s lifetime, whether it is alcohol or
drugs. So if the government could prevent one child going down that road they will save themselves that money. If they gave someone £1 million to set up a treatment centre they’re
going to save on things like
A&E
. I mean fifty-five per cent of people who go into
A&E
over a weekend is alcohol- or
addiction-related.
If you look at Ireland and the way the whole thought process is around alcohol and the minimising of it as a problem. I was doing a conference in Kerry with lots of government
representatives and addiction counsellors, and all they were talking about was they were going to come down heavy on drugs. I actually said, hang on a second, addiction is not just drugs,
it’s alcohol, it’s things like prescription tablets and gambling. Yet all you hear is, ‘We’re going to go down heavy on drug dealers.’
For me, socially, being sober, you are a little more isolated and I do feel isolated. I don’t tend to hang around pubs that long. But I have a great life. I have a lovely
husband who doesn’t drink. I don’t think it would work if he was in the pub every night. We go out for meals, we go walking. We go to plays and do all the things that people in
other countries do! If you go to New York or San Francisco that’s what people do. They don’t really go to pubs to hang out. I love going away. I’ve been in San Francisco and a
lot of it is around food and dinner. You might invite people over and they’d have wine, but they might have a bottle of wine and they’d all have a half glass each and some of them
mightn’t even finish the glass. I’d be amazed at that! They’d be having sips of water and some of them would be more interested in the water. They go to restaurants or go out
to [a] theatre. It’s just sad for me there’s not that many people in Ireland who do that. And that’s the reality. So when everyone goes to the pub I get bored and last maybe
three quarters of an hour.
Weddings I don’t mind because I dance but I wouldn’t stay late; I go and have the meal and have a chat but there’s a point where it might get a little late
and I go. I always have a room in the hotel just in case we need to escape!
I think any country that has been colonised, where your land and home has been taken off you, that type of trauma carries through generations. I went back to college to become
an addiction counsellor and one of my assignments was trauma and addiction in post-conflict Northern Ireland. Everybody in the North has been touched by the conflict, as we know, and
traumatised by it. What happens in that situation is that the trauma is carried onto another generation, even through the peace process, and manifests itself in a rise in addiction and problem
drinkers. This generation is now carrying that trauma. I do feel there is this thing in Ireland where you don’t show your emotions and feelings. Secrecy is a huge thing in this country,
which was a defence, in that you didn’t want anybody to know your business. People are afraid to show their emotions in this country.
If you have twelve in a group receiving treatment, the studies show only about three will make it. So it’s scary, and I think, if society was different, that statistics
might be higher. It’s really hard for a young man to come out of treatment and all his mates are getting pissed every night. This is my experience and I work in the Rutland Centre in
Dublin every weekend and do a lot of work around relapse prevention. Everything is lovely for the five weeks people are in treatment and they have great support and a good environment. When
they go back into their own environment, in many cases they’re on their own. And it’s not easy, but that’s the country we live in.