‘I had a bit of a breakdown’: Cork comedian Tadhg Hickey opens up about mental health

The Cork comic says he replaced an addiction to alcohol with an addiction to work, feeling the impact around Christmas

Tadhg Hickey. Picture: Cathal Noonan

Cork comedian Tadhg Hickey has spoken candidly about his recent mental health struggles as he hopes his experience can help others in a similar situation.

Hickey, who is best known for his politically-charged viral videos, says he overworked before Christmas and ended up in bed after experiencing a “breakdown”. He says he considered lying about his absence from social media but instead wants to help others going through a similar experience.

“I wasn’t online much and I was going to lie to ye and say I've got this cool new project and I just didn't have time to be online. But I thought it might be more useful to others if I told the truth. And the truth is I had a bit of a breakdown, to be honest,” he says in a video on Twitter.

A nervous breakthrough! 💚 pic.twitter.com/9ZttvYZVAy

— Tehran Tadhg (@TadhgHickey) February 16, 2022

“There's no shame in it. They don’t happen to me that much, I've never had [a breakdown] in sobriety, I used to have them when I was drinking and drugging the whole time. The final one I had back in the day about six or seven years ago and I realised if I don't stop drinking or taking drugs, I'll die. I stopped and I turned my whole life around.” 

Hickey says he is looking at it as a positive thing, however, and a sign for him to slow down.

“Rather than a breakdown, the way I look at  - and this is stolen from Alain de Botton, who I'd highly recommend - it's a bit of a breakthrough. This is my experience of a breakdown and depression and I know this is not the case across the board. Some people can do nothing about it, it’s clinical or whatever, but for me, it's usually a signal that I'm doing something wrong.

“Before Christmas, I was working 16-hour days without seeing any friends. I thought to myself, do I need friends anymore? In my mind I’m a ‘mystic’: I meditate a couple of times a day, I help younger addicts. I thought I was above ill health. I thought, 16-hour days? Grand. Hospitalised for kidney stones? Grand. Just plough on, don't meditate, don't exercise, don't see your friends, don't reach out to anyone and you'll be grand. Not the case. 

I ended up in bed, couldn't get out of bed, couldn’t eat, couldn't sleep. Mental, totally mental.

He believes it is linked to his alcoholism and he says he replaced that addiction with an addiction to work and social media.

“That's the thing. Alcoholism is a mental illness and a lot of people who aren't addicts don't realise that it's actually a mental illness. You turn your life around and it's unreal but it's not a case of putting down the bottle straight away and things are grand. You need to keep doing the good things to stay mentally healthy and I wasn't doing them. My addiction came in the back door. I got addicted to work, got addicted to Twitter as cringy as it is to say. I got addicted to people telling me I'm a great lad on Twitter, and addicted to pseudo-intellectual Wikipedia-fueled spats where people call me a Marxist, terrorist-supporting scumbag. That's the honest truth.” 

Hickey hopes by sharing his experience that others will spot the warning signs of a breakdown earlier, particularly self-employed and freelance workers like himself, and ask for help.

“I hope self-employed people might get something out of it. You push, push push, there’s not much work out there, you gotta keep going. Then you get obsessed and you block out what matters in life - and the things that got me out of this hole - which are exercise, love, passion, reaching out to people, the help I got is unreal, and meditation. What's the point in being busy if you have no peace of mind? That’s my take on it anyway.”