Authors: Brian O'Connell
Wasted (9 page)
Getting back to my own personal story, I very rarely talk publicly about my association with either
AA
or
NA
. They’re both
pretty unboastful organisations.
People within it can be judgmental but actually the organisation itself is not that judgmental. I hear the cliché thrown about of members being addicted to recovery and
so on, but that is not the case. I’m not addicted to recovery. I’m thirteen years sober and live a totally open life. I help others when I can. I go to meetings go to talk about
today. Everybody needs support and there’s no real addiction in that. Some people go to play bridge as a social outlet—I go to meetings as a social outlet. I go to meetings to see
my friends and to talk about real things that are going on in my life today. Together we are kind of driving each other, you know, to some sort of ideal or belief that there is something more
we can do to make our lives better.
I’m no defender of
NA
and
AA
and in a sense I’ve heard all the things that people use to criticise those
organisations. I say they are just as valid as the things I’ll say against what is said. I think . . . there are many ways to engage in being a non-drinker and staying clean. Definitely
the formula of
NA
and
AA
, which are voluntary organisations that exist all over the world, is a seriously healthy one. If you asked me about this
ten years ago, I would have said nothing else really works and if you don’t do it this way you’re probably hiding out. I don’t believe any of that any more. I just believe
that it really works for me. It works for a lot of others and it’s a really healthy way, but at the same time I believe that there are loads of other ways.
But just in terms of people saying you get addicted to recovery and all these things, that is pretty much nonsense. You see, you can get addicted to anything. That can’t
stop you going down a path—people would say, ‘Oh, well, then you shouldn’t exercise when you get clean because then you can get addicted to exercise.’ Yeah, but you
could
not
get addicted to it too, and even if you did start to overexercise eventually you would reach a rock bottom of that.
The point is that if you go by the guides of the fellowship it guides you away from anything like it becoming the dominant theme in your life. Those organisations don’t
exist to suck you in, they actually exist to give you freedom, and so if you end up in a situation where it becomes the dominant theme in your life, then you’re not doing it right.
That viewpoint about the fellowship, though, is out there and is a kind of short-term observance of what you think might be going on. People don’t really know what
it’s about when they say that. And sure there are some people that are hiding out in
AA
or
NA
, but good luck to them, it’s up to
them. That’s not because
AA
did that to them, it’s just because they decide after a couple of months that they want to replicate the pub in an
AA
group. What are you going to do? Take them out? It’s whatever people want it to be.
When I think back, I was so bloody young when I stopped drinking that I don’t see professional fulfilment playing a role in my sobriety. Academically I had to repeat
first year and even sober I again failed sociology. That’s because I was back in college, where I was a part-time student and a full-time person trying to get my life back in order.
Making new friends with the intention of going to meetings or going away for weekends became my full-time concerns for a while. But I don’t regret that.
It was someone I met through recovery that got me into comedy. I never did a gig when I was drinking—I was nearly three years sober when I did my first gig here in
Cork.
Not that I think recovery got me into comedy, but I do think that the way you open yourself up to a new energy, a new road, all those things came from that turn I took.
I believe the energies in your life happen as a result of you taking action and you build up this momentum. I do believe that everything that led to this path came from the
momentum of not drinking.
Being sober in Irish society is not something that overly concerns me. On one level you always get the ‘Why don’t you drink?’ comments, often from people that
are probably a little uncomfortable with their drinking. They either tend to push you away or else they sort of want to half-engage with you about it, without telling you anything. But you
half-know what they’re saying and it can be awkward because maybe you’re out in [a] social setting just trying to have a good time.
In my twenties, a lot of the time buddies of mine who were drinkers and might be going out on a big session wouldn’t call me, which was totally fine. But then, at the
same time, they’re bonding a lot with that, so your relationships tend to get strained because there’s this bonding thing that you don’t have and feel separate to.
I think, though, that bonding becomes less important as you get older. What becomes more important is getting together and playing a game of squash or a game of golf and maybe
going over to the house for dinner or maybe going away a bit more.
For instance, I couldn’t imagine travelling nowadays, or going on holidays, and drinking. I would be on my own in Thailand and the night maybe would start out great, but
later I’d be throwing a table across the room or some chaotic thing that would come over me. Then in the morning you’d wake up in a hostel and you’d have to leave the town
because you are the insane one that nobody cares about. So I couldn’t even imagine what that would be like.
Not drinking, I don’t ever feel like I’m missing anything. I don’t see what the big deal is—I don’t get it. Obviously when I was drinking, I
didn’t think about any of this. I just thought that I want to drink and I didn’t have any questions in my head. Nowadays I often look at people and say, ‘What do you think is
fun about this at all?’ There’s nothing in this. But once you’re in that cycle you don’t question it. Drinking is such an overrated thing, it’s not even funny.
It’s amazing how much energy is given to it in this country.
In the world of performing and arts, there is this myth out there if you stop your suffering your creativity gets knocked back. I don’t know anyone in my personal
experience whose life has not got infinitely better, more productive and more creative, when they stopped drinking. I could name loads of people—when they stopped drinking their
creativity blossomed. Then, on another level, it’s not a uniquely Irish thing. It’s a strange ideal that people would idealise or put on a pedestal this constant of the romantic
version of the suffering artist or the lonely drinking figure. Only in Ireland would you idolise or consider it a goal to become someone who is miserable and suffering. I think when people hold
up that ideal they don’t realise that behind the Brendan Behans and Patrick Kavanaghs there is ferocious pain that these people will probably never experience. There’s nothing
romantic about it.
People hold up Shane MacGowan as this oracle. I find Shane MacGowan so sad that it makes me cry sometimes. I find it even sadder that people would enable this Greek tragedy to
continue in public view.
I find that terrible. Alcoholism to me is a brutal, brutal disease that destroys families. Yet people can hold up these figures as if they are heroes. To me, they’re not
heroes. And they’re not villains either—they’re just sad, sad characters.
If a writer needs a few glasses of wine to write, then how insecure do you have to be in your own creativity to think that it comes from three glasses of wine?
As if you never have an idea when on a train after your first cup of coffee that wasn’t as valid as the idea someone comes up with after three glasses of wine. What I
would say is that that writer is probably riddled with fear and self-doubt and totally critical in his own head, which we all struggle with in terms of creativity. The censorship that goes on
in our own mind with this committee that doesn’t exist, telling us that things are shit. The writer who needs drink to write probably can’t shut them off until he has three glasses
of wine. But it’s easy to shut them off if you learn how to do it. That’s just a confidence thing. It’s the same as someone saying to me, ‘Oh, well, I started drinking
because I didn’t have the confidence to talk to women and once I had a few pints, I could talk to women. Little did I know that twenty years later I’d be getting kicked out of my
house, my children crying and so on.’ You hear that story in so many different ways.
The thing about life is it is so much more exhilarating to find out how to challenge your fears without substance. Yet with addicts, every day you’re dousing yourself and
taking away the joy of life by saying, ‘I use this to get me through it.’ But it doesn’t have to be like that.
Chapter 3
I
t’s 10 a.m. on Monday morning in a rural village in north Tipperary. The owner of the bar is putting on the kettle, stocking the shelves and
getting ready for his morning shift of regulars. Every bar has them—the core group of daytime drinkers who prop up the bar and the profits and are first in and often last out. There are only
two bars left in the village now—the drink-driving/smoking ban has seen to the closure of others, or perhaps the area was overpopulated by public houses in the past.
I hadn’t spent a day in a bar for a few years and wanted to observe a group of daytime drinkers in a traditional Irish setting. Looking back, there was a time I could think of nothing
better to do with a day than plonk myself on a high stool. Often I’d start off with a white wine (to convince myself I wasn’t drinking, because wine, as any regular drinker will tell
you, isn’t alcohol at all), switch to pints mid-afternoon and finish the evening with gin and tonics or tequilas and grapefruit. If the truth be told, I was a little apprehensive and slightly
edgy at the prospect of entering a bar again for a whole day. For the first year after giving up the drink, I didn’t really set foot inside a bar, beyond a quick hello and perhaps a mineral.
I was worried who might see me and afraid that someone could misinterpret the situation and get word out I was back on the gargle. Even now, almost five years on, I have a two- or three-hour limit
on how long I can spend in a bar. Having said that, there is one bar I feel totally comfortable in (cue prepaid endorsement)—the Corner House on Coburg Street in Cork. It’s a funny one
because I would have done a fair bit of drinking in the bar in the past. But I feel relaxed there because most of the staff and regulars know my story and so the tension when I approach the bar
isn’t there as it might be in other places (begin Cheers soundtrack—‘Making your way in the world today . . .’). If I ordered a pint, in other words, there would be raised
eyebrows and a disapproving reaction (
everybody
: ‘Taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot’). The bartenders are safekeepers of my sobriety by virtue of the
fact that they are aware of my circumstances (chorus: ‘Where everybody knows your name’). Also, Fergal, the owner, does a great pot of coffee with a free chocolate thrown in. And if
that doesn’t grab you, he only charges €1.50 for a Ballygowan (and that includes a dash of lime). Carlsberg definitely don’t do sober joints, but if they did . . .
In most places, there’s a seemingly carefree abandon to the life of a daytime drinker, with the pub like a kindly uncle who wraps his arms around you and protects you from the outside
world. Call it safety in declining numbers. The life of the daytime drinker, though, is one of avoidance, of dodging calls and dinners, of skewed budgeting and yesterday’s clothes. It’s
a life of empty retching and remorse, of diarrhoea, headaches, hangovers, holding on to emotions you should have let go of a long time ago and lost causes. The smoking ban has interrupted that
closed world, brought the daytime drinker outside the intoxicated womb for nicotine inhales, holding him up against regular life. I used to notice it most outside the early houses near Cork’s
Union Quay. Charlie’s Bar, for instance, where early-morning drinkers were forced to take their cigarette breaks outside the door, in the heart of the business and legal district. Many of
them would have been familiar with the family law courts around the corner or the maintenance payments office next door. And here they were, being forced to display their antisocial antics in front
of society. Charlie’s quickly added a smoking room at the back of the bar, thereby eliminating the need for early-morning punters to see or be seen. The hidden life of the daytime drinker
could remain hidden for another while longer.
The drinking in the bar on the Monday morning I visited was progressive and steady. Four regulars stood or sat at the bar—one of them going through four pints of Carlsberg in 46 minutes,
while another had six large bottles of Guinness in a little over an hour. They weren’t exactly sipping it, in other words. The conversation was of bicycles left behind after a night’s
drinking, of neighbouring villages where bars close at 3 p.m. on a Sunday, and memories of a regular who had passed away weeks earlier. Some of them kept their money in glasses cases, while others
carefully counted out loose change—leftover debris from the weekend’s drinking. I was told a story of one regular who went to a local doctor with a pain in his side. It was suggested by
the medic that this could be his liver in need of help.
‘How many units of alcohol would you have a week?’ asked the doctor. ‘Jesus, I don’t know,’ said the regular, ‘maybe a hundred?’
‘You realise 2 units makes up one pint?’
‘Better make that a hundred and fifty, so.’
(This reminded me of a similar tale from Mallow in Cork, of a hardened drinker visiting his
GP
with severe stomach pains. The doctor, knowing full well what lay behind
his patient’s medical problems, asked, ‘How many pints would you drink in an evening?’
‘No idea, Doctor,’ came the reply.