Authors: Brian O'Connell
Wasted (18 page)
‘There was plenty work when I came over here. Now there is no work. Half of them are dead anyway. Few pints after work. I would say it’s much worse now. In Ireland it’s bad
too—I listen to Radio Éireann and ten percent unemployment in Ireland.
‘There’s a
céad míle fáilte
there for me any time I want but I cannot go back to nothing. My sister is there and she has the home place and that. Great
girl but she wants me back. But what would I go back to? Back to nothing, like. And I would be a waste of space to her. Jesus, it would be all right if things were right, like. Oh, she wants me
back, alright. She’s not worried about money or nothing. She doesn’t care about nothing. But sure I’m after spending all me life in England and to go back with nothing, just empty
pockets. Wouldn’t I look great? So everybody has their own little thing.
‘Leaving the drink aside? It’s impossible almost. When you live in a room on your own. I palled around with a lovely girl. She got fed up of me. She is a nurse. She done everything
she possibly could to put me on the straight and narrow. She brought me back to Killarney. And I hope they lift the All-Ireland for that reason.
‘Great girl. Brought me back and done everything for me. I was off drink then and it would only take something, like Rangers to beat Celtic or something like that.
‘They’re playing Sunday week now, Celtic and Rangers. I might make it yet. Jesus, we might all go. We might all go.
‘I was here when I was off the drink. I used to go to Celtic Park every few weeks. At the same time all me mates were all heavy drinkers. Jesus—they’re all dead now. Tom is the
only survivor. Some of them would knock on the door at two or three o’clock in the morning. And sure I’d answer the door straight away for them, no problem at all. Jesus, they’re
dead now. The man other side that wall there. Billy Simpson. He was sixty-eight. And Patsy was in the room across, he was sixty-nine. And Eoin in the back room was from Achill Island. But Jesus, we
were all the one gang, a crazy gang. All great mates. Nobody would see each other wrong. It’s a different ball game now. It’s beating me now and all, I know it is. At the same time
I’m fighting a good aul’ battle, as best I can.
‘I’m in love with a lovely girl, but sure it’s drink again. She was going to marry me and everything if I gave it up. Didn’t happen, like. But sure a man cannot be an
altar boy all his life, can he? When you weigh it up, like. Great girl, love her to bits.
‘The landlord is not up to much, hasn’t got much time for me. He was around a while ago, could still be here. All he thinks about is money, money, money. Like
ABBA
, you remember the song, “Money, money, money, it’s a rich man’s world”? Well, he can have his fucking money. That’s the way I look at it. He’ll
only wait for somebody to die and he does up the room straight away and moves someone else in. There’s more to life than money. Do you know what he should do now? He should go out to
Stockholm in Sweden and meet that girl there in the poster, Agnetha, look at her. She could sing that song to him. A week in Stockholm would do him good. It’s my life ambition to meet her,
and please God I will some day. I have her number in that drawer there somewhere. I used to write to her and everything but she didn’t write back to me, though.
‘I usually go to a café. There is a kitchen here in the building but it’s dog rough, very seldom I eat here.
‘All my mates are dead. I have no company here at all. I’m not really happy here. The move is on. Only a matter of time. I don’t know where, though, as close as possible to
Celtic Park would suit me, that’s for sure.
‘I’ll give you one bit of advice, the next time you go on holiday, don’t go out to France, or Japan or anywhere like that. Go to Celtic Park. That’s where you’ll
find atmosphere. All Irish.
‘I was home about two years ago, and I do phone home regular. ’Twas John Glynn and the people from the hall here that brought me back last time. ’Twas sort of embarrassing,
like, everybody has their pride and everything else. I went back and I had nothing. The family gave me money and everything and it was embarrassing, like.
‘My family hadn’t much money, my father might sell an auld cow or a bullock or a sheep or that type of thing to pay the rates. He struggled to bring up the family. There was eight of
us and two died. He went drinking a Fair day, a few bottles of stout maybe. He wouldn’t drink then until the next Fair day, until he sold something else. He came up the hard way.
‘I was awful young when I had a drink. I was only going to school, like. There was a Horse Fair in Westport, show-jumping and all that. The auld fella was in one part of the tent and I was
at another. I was only about ten or eleven. He didn’t see me. Me mates were buying me drink. He couldn’t afford a drink.
‘I went flat out with the drinking then as a teenager. I shouldn’t be alive at all, you know. I don’t deserve to be alive. Flat out altogether. Fourteen, fifteen, everything.
The swinging sixties. Drink, women and gambling. Gambling came first, still does and all.
‘Kato Star—look at the picture of him up there behind you and the crucifix underneath him. I had four hundred pounds on him Saint Stephen’s Day. He sailed in and I told the
whole town, days and days before this. I even told Julie to put her last set of knickers on him. She didn’t back him at all. I put everything I had on him, hadn’t a bob left for
Christmas. Three pounds.
‘He won at 5-4 and I got nine hundred pounds back and I painted the town red. I went stone mad.
‘I don’t go the pub much any more, Jaysus, it’s too dear, over three pounds a pint. I’m drinking cans of cider now. Three of me mates are dead and the best mate I had has
gone. He got a flat. I don’t have his phone number; I have a mobile there and don’t know how to use it.
‘I get the papers every morning down the road there. I get the
Mayo News
and all, like.
‘Nice to keep in touch, like. I can see an All-Ireland in that team yet.
‘The house and woman I had all went simultaneously—do you like that word? It means together at the one time! I was engaged to her and all that. I had a house in Westport, built it
myself with these two paws. Built it meself, roofed it meself and plastered it meself. Anyway, things didn’t work out. We’re the best of friends. She got married since and she has four
daughters now. And look at me here in this room. I have nothing here. Even the mouse pulled out. There was a mouse here one time but he pulled out. He got fed up.
‘I love the gambling. I’m good at it, though. Oh Jesus, I’m well ahead of the bookie. Honest to Jesus. Well ahead of them. There’s a man up there in Ladbrokes, he hates
to see me coming. Hates the sight of me. I done it again the weekend. Man United they were 4-2, didn’t collect for a week. I do it all the time.
‘There’s a great kick out of it. Even poor auld Julie. She never bet in her life and she loves her football. Now she would think nothing about putting a few hundred pound on a
football team! Talking about the future, there’s a lad from Northern Ireland—McIlroy. Oh Jaysus, there’s money to be made on him yet. He’s going to go places in a big
way.
‘Another Tiger Woods.
‘If I got me aul’ head together I could take the bookie. I could leave William Hill in the park. Every morning when I get out of that bed I think, what can I get William Hill for?
That’s my life’s ambition, to leave William Hill in the park. Oh, leave him begging for cigarette butts. In the park. Me life’s ambition.’
M
y first drink was a flagon of Linden Village Cider, bought in a pub before a local disco in Mullinahone, County
Tipperary. I was about twelve and a half or thirteen years of age. There were trees about five hundred yards from my house and we went there drinking before the disco. There used to be discos
every second week, and a few months after that I was served in a pub for the first time. I was thirteen years of age and ended up with lads fifteen or sixteen. I remember I went with them and
had a few pints of ale. I would have been a fairly quiet and calm type of person and very shy, but I changed that night. I went to the disco and had great craic and the whole lot. At the time I
was working and had a few bob in my pocket. Two weeks later, I got really drunk and sick in the toilet, got into an argument with lads I was drinking with. Looking back, that tells me drink
didn’t suit me—day one. From that drink to my last drink, there was periods of mayhem and trouble in my life and it all came and revolved around drink.
From the age of fifteen or sixteen, I was drinking more regular, often hanging around with older guys. In—two pubs in the village I couldn’t get served in. But at
fifteen, I was drinking in one of them regularly and there was no issue out of it. We won the junior south final in 1985, when I was fifteen, and I was drinking in the pub after it, and there
was no issue. But yet I couldn’t get served in the pub across the road until I was seventeen. In the early 1990s, I went to a sixteenth birthday party up there, and the place was serving
sixteen-year-olds now. The culture had changed and there was acceptance there that hadn’t been there a decade earlier.
At sixteen or seventeen, I stopped drinking for a period. I got it into my mind to make the Tipperary minor hurling team. I remember Christmas 1986 and drinking hard. I was
doing stuff like robbing drink in the bar and having the craic around the town—really drinking heavily. Waking up in the bed after Stephen’s Morning, I remember saying,
‘I’m not drinking any more.’ I had to be carried home the night before and don’t remember getting into the bed. I had probably wet the bed also and I said to myself,
‘That’s it now, I’m going training and making the Tipperary team.’
That year I drank two pints of ale shandy after the Munster final and I drank a few pints on the Sunday night of the All-Ireland and that was it. I didn’t drink for the
rest of that year. I suppose the pattern changed when I went working. I got into the Tipperary senior hurling team at this point and started working with a beer company. I got into a routine
where I would have a few pints on the weekend and that. Maybe after dinner on a Sunday I would have a few drinks and go into the disco in Clonmel. I would have had a car at the time and would
have thought nothing about having three or four drinks before driving into town. Then we’d drink all night and drive home. We used to go out the back roads and I know that for loads of
lads that was the pattern. Sunday night was the night to go out. In my time drinking that changed to Thursday nights and now it would seem to be Saturday night.
When I played with Tipperary I got a great start in 1989 and again in 1991, when we were in the All-Ireland. There was a great drinking culture around the matches at that time
and the sport was different. I remember two or three of our guys before the All-Ireland in 1989 had a few pints on the Saturday night. We were staying in the Burlington and they went across the
road to the lounge and had their two pints. That was a regular thing for a few of the players, through the championship. They’d have a few pints on the Saturday night. The first few years
of the championship, when it was over, there was a great session after the last match. It could last for three or four days and the panel would stay together. Then we’d break up and
mightn’t see each other until we went back training.
We might have a few pints after training on an odd night, and the last league match we’d have a session, then take a break and then back training.
I did that for maybe four years. Looking back, when I used to stop in January and train it was fine. But I suppose when I was twenty-two or twenty-three I found that it went to
February when I stopped drinking and then it went to March and then to April. The last year of my drinking, playing with Tipperary, was 1996. I would have drank two weeks before we played in
the championship. Now, if you told me that six or seven years previously, there is no way I would have believed you. What happened is that it gathered momentum. I remember after the All-Ireland
in 1991, I put on ferocious weight for the championship in 1992. We played Cork and one of the selectors told me not to run with the ball, just to hit it when I got it because I wasn’t
fit enough. That was all drink related.
I never drank at home. I suppose with the hurling, people liked to be in my company and with Tipperary on the crest of a wave they were getting information that would be linked
directly to the camp. It was normal rural life. I would have went into pubs a lot of the time saying I would only have a cup of tea and [a] sandwich, and I’d nearly be waiting for someone
to offer me a drink.
They might say, ‘Will you have a pint?’ and I’d say, ‘Ah, no, no.’ The pressure would come on and I’d have one and then maybe two and then
that was it.
Down through the years I would have missed appointments and presentations of medals. With the drinking you are afraid if you leave you’ll miss something and yet it is the
same thing every week.
From the age of thirteen no one ever really pulled me aside and said anything to me about the drinking. I remember a Guard saying something to me one night. He had twin sons my
age and I was very drunk the night before and he spotted me walking down the street. He called me and said, ‘If I see you drinking again, I’ll kick the arse off you. Don’t let
me catch you again.’ That was the only warning I got. The parents would have been onto me at home, because with the car and everything. But I didn’t see any danger with it.
With my job as a sales representative for Finches I was in pubs every day of the week and I would have prided myself on the fact that I didn’t drink. Yet I found I would
get up in the morning and rush through my day’s work. I wouldn’t give customers time and would be watching the clock to try and get finished by four or half four so I could get back
to my local. That was regular practice, particularly on a Monday. We had some great days’ drinking as well with good craic and banter. I could get to the pub some days at half four on a
Monday and mightn’t leave that pub until Wednesday morning.
We’d drink all day Tuesday—be in the bar at half ten in the morning. I was always meant to be working that day but I had it set up so that the Tuesday run
hadn’t to be in until Wednesday evening. I could double up with work on a Wednesday by ringing a few people. I wasn’t doing my job properly. Wednesday night I’d go up to a pub
in Mullinahone and have three or four pints and then I’d come home. I was always last leaving the pub. On Thursdays I’d come into Clonmel into the nightclub and go drinking. God
knows where I’d stay Thursday night, and I’d get up and do a bit of work Friday—it wouldn’t have been a busy day for the job. I’d probably go in and meet some lad
for lunch and go off drinking for the day then. That would stay going until Sunday.
That was the pattern for the last nine to ten months of my drinking. I would have lost relationships with girls through my drinking. You wouldn’t give it time and would
always be in the pub. I would have been caught two-timing and all that.
At that time, the mindset would have been that’s normal.
The last nine months, a friend had given up the drink himself and I would meet him once every month or every six weeks, and he’d often say, ‘John, do you think
you’re drinking too much?’
‘Jaysus I’m not,’ I’d say, ‘no more than my friends.’
I never realised I was drinking every day of the week. I woke up loads of times dying, and saying, ‘I’m not drinking any more.’ I never blamed the drink,
though, I blamed my system. I would be lying there with the head fried off me and I’d often have
DT
s and be thinking there were things under the bed and be afraid
to get out of the bed and all that kind of stuff. But I never blamed the drink; I always thought there was something else wrong with me.
The crux in my drinking came when a few friends organised a trip to Manchester. It was an opportunity for a session after Christmas, which wouldn’t have been a good time
with work, but I was going anyway and never told them at work I was going. We were going to see a match, heading over on a Friday night for the match Saturday. I never told work I was taking
Friday off—I just rang in the order and took off.
Vodka and soda was my drink of choice and I was really, really drinking them. I remember the Friday night in Manchester we went out and had good craic. I was knocking these
things down—two of the guys wouldn’t drink with me. On Saturday we went to the match, Aston Villa v Man United, and it ended up nil-all. We all went on the piss after and arrived
back to the hotel after the night’s drinking. There were a couple of lads around the counter. Two of us went to the hotel bar for a drink and we started talking about the match with the
lads at the bar. I said I would have loved to see a goal scored at Old Trafford. One of the guys couldn’t comprehend it, as I was a Liverpool supporter. I was saying, ‘What
difference does it make?’ It stirred in me and I was drinking a glass of vodka and I flipped. With the glass in my hand, I punched the guy into the face. I thought, ‘What the fuck
am I after doing?’ I remember I had to go out of the hotel and the next thing the police came and I was brought away and put in a cell that night. In the cell, it was the first real time
I examined what had gone wrong with my life. When I looked back, there were two previous incidents when that aggression and anger was there. I remember another night at a work do when one word
led to another and I lashed out again. I was reprimanded at work; I think that was five years previously. Maybe two or three years before that again, at a disco, I met a girl and her brother
didn’t take it kindly and I lost it with the brother. Each incident ended up being more harmful to each person involved. That night in the cell I prayed and asked for help.
It was the first time it had sunk in that when I looked back at my life, every night I was in trouble I had drink taken. Lo and behold, the first man at my door was the friend
who had been asking me about my drinking. I had to go to court first thing on a Monday morning and got bailed into a hostel.
He booked into a hotel and I was allowed to leave the hostel at seven in the morning and be back in for eleven at night. On the Wednesday I got bailed back to Ireland.
I had it in my mind I was going to get back to Ireland and head off to America. I remember deep down I had a lot of realities to face coming home, including my family, because
the incident made national news in the papers. I had to ring my employer because I didn’t turn up for work. The employer wanted meet to me on a Tuesday and given that five years
previously there had been an incident, this was not new to them. I thought I was going to be out of a job, and met the two directors of the company. They asked me what happened and asked was I
going to do anything about it. By this time I had organised to go in for treatment so I told them I needed a month off. I remember I got a good bollicking and they went outside the door and
said, ‘Your job will be there and we’ll suspend you without pay.’ That was the first break I got.
I had to meet the county board in Tipperary, which wasn’t nice either. They were fully supportive, though, once they saw I was doing something. So I did the month in
treatment, and didn’t look back, really.
It’s thirteen years this year since I stopped drinking and it’s no coincidence that I haven’t been in trouble and I haven’t been locked up or in rows in
that time. That shite hasn’t gone on in my life since I stopped drinking. It was a big readjustment. In 1996, I went back playing for Tipperary and back into work. I was as nervous going
to my first call out as my first day in school, because I was out in the public domain again and people would have known about my story. I would have got a bit of grief from people in the
street and so on. I got it on the pitch also—lads would have been throwing it at me about the incident in Manchester. They were all quite hurtful, and I used often say to myself,
‘Is it really worth putting myself in these positions?’ I contemplated not playing any more and some days I found it hard to get up and go training or to go to work.
I remember one chap in a rural village and he was only about twelve years of age. I came out of a shop and he threw this thing at me about Manchester and it shook me. I said to
myself, ‘This will never leave me.’ I can still get it at times today. When I do go out or go to a drinking scene now, I have to be fairly vigilant and careful who I mix with and
where I go. It can still be brought up. Even this year at an occasion I was at, it was brought up.