Authors: Brian O'Connell
Wasted (22 page)
One gets the feeling, though, those problems exist regardless.
——
A more recent development in terms of Ireland’s drinking history has been the high number of pub closures over the past decade. Reports estimate that somewhere in the
region of 1,500 pubs have closed over the last six years, or almost 10 bars a week. The drinks industry expect a further 9,000 jobs to be lost in the industry in 2009, which could represent a 20
per cent reduction when taken along with 2008 figures.
What trends are showing is that alcohol is leaving the main street and crossroads and becoming more and more an acceptable part of the home environment. The days when alcohol in the home
consisted of a dusty bottle of sherry, taken out once a year when Aunt Vera arrived, seem a distant memory, oral fragments of another time. Now, weekly shopping baskets are as likely to have a
six-pack of beer or shoulder bottle of spirits thrown in. A casual visit by a next-door neighbour, or a night in watching a movie, is enough to prompt the opening of a bottle of wine. In many ways
we’re returning to a more medieval style of drinking, less evocative of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century forms. The changing nature of community has seen the closure of corner shops and
post offices—not just in Ireland. With the erosion of community spirit, there is an increasing sense of loneliness and isolation in rural communities and anonymity in our urban ones.
With alcohol, those feelings can be muted. The difficulty, too, in Ireland is one of perception. If Guinness really is good for you, and red wine proposed as the cure for a host of ailments,
then what’s the big deal?
Ireland, Inc., continues to hold Guinness dear as one of its flagship and defining brands, like the Cliffs of Moher or Kerrygold.
Some of that is down to the pioneering efforts of that company over the last 250 years to provide for its workers and their families. Like Fr Mathew in Cork, benevolent deeds live long in the
folk culture.
Yet the fixation on Guinness in Ireland, the pride in the pint, and the closeness of branding between Ireland and a pint of the black stuff, suggest a deeper forging of identity between the
people and its pint.
The fact that the brewery remains our largest tourist attraction—not the areas of breathtaking scenery or the historical monuments, but a working brewery—says much about perceptions
of Ireland abroad. Yet they are perceptions we have not denied. From American presidents to Ryder Cup captains, the thing to do in Ireland is to have a pint; only then can the visitor go truly
native. Yet as trends change over the next decade, those perceptions will be challenged. The cost of the craic, both financially and socially to the state, may place pressure on the branding of
Ireland, Inc.
When the Ryder Cup was won on Irish soil in 2006, captains and players celebrated by downing pints of the black stuff in one gulp, to a
TV
audience of millions, all the
while egged on by thousands of cheering spectators. Is that the epitome, the sum total, of what defines the national spirit?
We think nothing of having a drinks company sponsor our national sports. Road traffic accidents on weekends and late nights spiral, accident and emergency wards struggle to cope with the
casualties of alcohol abuse, and our few alcohol treatment centres are starved of funding. Still, though, the national image continues unabated and unaltered.
As Bono might say, I don’t mean to bug you.
F
or me, drinking has become related to my creative impulses. If I am writing, I would probably go out every night and have
two or three glasses of wine in my local bar and then take notes on the walk home. I would be afraid if I gave that up! I know writers who have been in trouble with drink and gave it up and
found it difficult to find a new creative way after.
Also, drinking allows for random association in your head. I’m not talking about drunkenness, just a few glasses. If I was to look through my notebooks, a lot of stuff
there I have come up with after having a few glasses of wine. I don’t know if those thoughts would have been there otherwise, which is interesting.
Beryl Bainbridge talks about cigarettes doing that for her. I mean, she drinks also, but when she gave up cigarettes she stopped writing for ages.
As a young teenager, drink was talked about as being a maturity thing. I got served in pubs at fifteen, but I had been drinking flagons of cider from about the age of fourteen
onwards. We did lots of outdoors drinking down the tracks in Ennis or over where the Bishop’s field used to be near the river. If we couldn’t get drink we talked about how we were
going to get drink. It was a massive part of our lives and being able to hold your drink was really important. There was never a thought that you wouldn’t drink. It was always something
you would do when you grew older.
If you think about it, how many pubs are there in Ennis? I mean, there are a lot of them and drinking is a huge part of the social scene in rural Ireland. It’s massive.
It’s there for christenings and weddings and funerals and every day during the week also for a lot of people.
I don’t know whether it’s something to do with the fact that Irish people aren’t very direct with each other. When you are trying to understand what Irish
people are talking about you have to go through lots of different routes, whereas with drink, it cuts all that out. I think there is also a shame element in it. Irish people like the shame of
the morning after in some perverse way.
When we were younger, if you were found surrounded in a pool of your own vomit somewhere in a field or near the tracks it would be seen as a disgrace. However, at seventeen you
were brought into a bar with your father and bought your first pint. The lads would buy you three or four pints and you would be a bit locked and go home.
It is so ingrained in our social lives that we don’t know any other way to interact with each other. Also we’re not a great theatre- or opera-going population. I
mean, in the west of Ireland there isn’t a lot to do. Men went to the pubs to get away from the women and children. I know that sounds very sexist, but I think it was a great way for men
to communicate with each other.
Drink in theatre is constant as a theme. McPherson goes through it in every single play and it is also a constant in Tom Murphy’s plays. In fact, I think drink is
mentioned in every Irish play there is! There are wonderful descriptions of the wake in Playboy of the Western World, when the characters are dry retching on the holy stones at the funeral and
so on.
I’d love to know are Irish people actually drinking more than they did before.
I think men always drank in the way they do.
In Dublin, those addicted to drugs and homeless are seen as a terrible shame. For the most part, people are able to keep it together with drink and still function. We tend to
forgive a problem drinker a lot more than we would another addiction. I think that’s because in most Irish families there is always someone with a drink problem.
I think there is a huge emotional catastrophe involved with drink—it really does wreck families.
A friend of my father’s was known as an alcoholic. The reason he was known as an alcoholic was that he drank so many pints and got himself into such a state that he was
brought to hospital. And that was an alcoholic. My mother had the opinion if you only drank beer and didn’t drink spirits, you couldn’t be an alcoholic, which I kind of subscribed
to. I never drink spirits now in case I become an alcoholic!
Irish people are very slow to use the word ‘alcoholic’. I know people who would have been friends of mine who would have gone through treatment because of drink.
Others would say to me, ‘I never saw them drunk!’
There is a huge fear around people who don’t drink. There is a fear they are watching you. They’re counting how many drinks you’re having.
Also, generally speaking, Irish people are very good with drink. It is great fun! It becomes oppressive after a while. I mean, you have to be careful of it, because it’s
so massively accessible and such a part of our social and family lives. No matter if you never had it in your family you have to be careful with yourself around drink. If you’re drinking
heavily in your late twenties it can develop quickly into something rather painful for everybody.
Secondary school is the place to start talking about the issue—when I think back, there was no education whatsoever. I would say a majority of schoolchildren drink so
there should be open discussion.
I remember from my own school days, people who didn’t drink were stupid or squares. It’s as simple as that—they were holy Joes who needed Pioneers badges. I
got hooked by all the rock ‘n’ roll myths. You know, the Jack Daniels and cigarettes, annihilation and all that!
I have a number of friends who are alcoholic and to a greater or lesser extent in denial about it. There are people who, when I was a kid, from the moment they drank I knew
they were insane with drink. I certainly would know the damage it does and it makes people, especially around children, emotionally promiscuous with their children. With drink on, it’s
friendly, it’s great and so on. With no drink it’s standoffish and prudish.
The not knowing what is coming back at you screws kids.
It’s a big thing with Irish weddings as well—there’s a thought that you shouldn’t bring kids because we’ll all be getting drunk. That’s a
uniquely Irish thing.
Firstly, I find I could drink every day, and when I’m doing a play I do drink every day. I would have two glasses of wine. At the weekends I’d have more. By some
people’s definition that’s a lot. It doesn’t create a problem for me. I live alone and I don’t have children so it’s all about maintaining my own sanity. If I
drank heavily I would lose my mind. Other people can do it quite easily. I do appreciate the creative impulses that it unleashes, though. When I’m not writing I mightn’t drink at
all.
For a year I gave up drink. For it to work, I think you have to stop judging people and get into a totally different headspace. I felt sorry for a lot of people. You also just
have very little tolerance for spending five hours in a pub. You go in for an hour and leave. Going into clubs, you have to leave about 12.45, when it all goes nuts. Walking home, the town is
just like
28 Days Later
—zombies, freaks and vomit—it’s very strange. It was a good year for me. I got extremely healthy and found I had so much time.
I decided to go back to drink because I like drinking. I like pubs. My local I love. It’s a part of my life. My friends all drink. I felt I was being very isolated
without it. We could all do Bikram yoga four times a week, but reality is a different matter!
The local I go to is interesting in that you can go there and you know the people vaguely, but they wouldn’t know anything about what their family lives are like. Your
friends call in and the bar staff you know really well. There is something light in the place and detached from the heaviness of your work and there is a breathing space there. I think a really
good bar gives that to its clientele.
In general, the Irish are not the type of people who visit each other’s houses. We never had visitors growing up, maybe on a Sunday afternoon, perhaps. We meet outside
the house.
When I came to write and act in
Adam and Paul
I spent a lot of time studying addicts. Those boys and girls I looked at on the street, first off I was interested in them
physically. I saw both characters as two classic clown characters, because the drink has always been a staple of comedy. So I wanted to shift it on to drugs. I always said the character Tom
Murphy played, the reasons he became an addict and all that was because no one held him as a child. Without that stability, what else is there except to cover it all up with whatever drug you
can find? I think alcohol does that for a lot of people as well.
It was—the first thing I noticed when I came to Dublin was the heroin problem, and I thought it was shocking. It’s interesting that those lads comes from places
where families are in great difficulty and where there is no stability—without stability you can’t stand up on your own two feet, really.
I’m interested in the subject as a writer but I don’t want to write about alcoholism, just like
Adam and Paul
was never about drug addiction. I’m
interested in what it does. I’m writing a family story at the moment and I think drink is going to be a major part of it. It’s hard to write an Irish family story without it.
I feel like I’m in the middle of a drinking culture so to comment on it is really strange.
The acting community has always been hard drinkers. You know the Donal McCanns and all of that. The Abbey was famous for the drink. These days there is so much more of a lid on
it. If someone came in with drink on their breath there would be serious trouble from the other actors. Nobody wants it any more and everybody is much more professional.
When you look at what happens to an actor going on stage—it’s the same amount of adrenalin you get from a car crash. It gives you [a] huge high and you can’t
go home with that coursing through your veins. You won’t sleep—I’ve tried it. For my year off drink I was doing a few plays and it would be six a.m. when I’d fall
asleep. Whereas two glasses of wine can take the edge off things. I talked to an older actor once and I said something about another actor being an alcoholic in the nineteeen-seventies.
His reply was that ‘Ah, we were all alcoholics in the seventies. You got over it!’