Tadhg Hickey: 'I wake up every day with alcoholism and I have to treat it every day'

Tadhg Hickey. Picture: Cathal Noonan. 

I grew up in McCurtain’s Villas in Cork City which was perfect for a class-obsessed, Wiki-Marxist like myself. We were perched between lah di dah Sunday’s Well and Mardyke Walk (cricket clubs and everything) and Barrack Street, which although quite bougie these days, was the wild west in the early 90s, with more pubs than sense.

It was mostly myself, Mam, Dad and my sister at home (older brothers were married and/or living elsewhere).

My earliest memory is when I was about five years old. I’m standing on Cork’s famous Shandon Street. It was a baking hot summer’s day and my eyes were bouncing between a delicious 99 ice-cream, which was dripping chaotically over my fat little hand, and my dad, who was standing looking out over the city, demolishing his own 99 without so much as an errant drip. He looked like an aquiline gladiator. I was just standing there, looking at my dad looking at Cork. I assumed he owned the place. He was bald and proud, playful and formidable, and he was my dad. I was very happy to be knocking around with him.

I think we’re all born clueless. We go down a series of cul-de-sacs, hitting our heads over and over again until we finally have enough of the head-hitting. After enough pain, we eventually go down the right road for us. That’s my experience anyway.

The greatest challenge I’ve faced so far in my life is alcoholism. The challenge is ongoing but I’m currently in a very good place. I’ve been sober for over eight years but I still remember keenly the carnage of active addiction. One of the worst aspects of substance abuse, for me at least, is the loss of your own integrity, the feeling that your ‘word’ is worthless. I’m glad to say I’ve had the opportunity to make amends to most of my loved ones for the many broken promises.

I’m not sure if having daughters is an achievement but I sure am proud of them. My 19-year-old, Caoimhe, is the most empathetic and hilarious young woman in Europe. My three-month-old, Sadhbh, is quite self-centred and unreasonable but she’s off-the-charts cute.

I think I have a knack for making difficult subjects palatable through humour. My play In One Eye, Out The Other is about a lonely delusional alcoholic who has suffered unimaginable childhood trauma and neglect but it’s a laugh a minute!

I’ve a guy in my recovery circles I turn to. In his drinking days, he was apparently ultra-violent and self-obsessed. Today he’s the warmest, most altruistic person I know. I need people like that around me, people who’ve changed for the better. I’d like to think I’m on the same path.

Tadhg Hickey. Picture: Glen Bollard.

The life lesson I would like to pass on is ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’ — and it’s all small stuff. I wasted so much time in my teens and 20s worrying about what other people thought of me. It’s nice to finally realise that you’re not that important (in a good way).

The greatest advice I have ever been given is; ‘Don’t go into Glasgow city centre on your own at night wearing a Republican Hunger Strike commemoration T-shirt.’ If only I’d listened.

I’d like to be remembered as just an ordinary, wickedly handsome man who broke up the United Kingdom through the unusual means of internet comedy.

If I could change something from my past, I’d take away all the hurt and terror I caused my loved ones when I was drinking and drugging. And yet it’s funny because it was that grinding guilt of hurting others that ultimately led me to stop, that and the feeling that I was going to die if I didn’t. I leaned on other sober alcoholics for support and later did psychotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy to get to the bottom of why I was drinking in the first place.

Climate change has absolutely impacted how I live my life but not so much about what George Monbiot calls ‘micro-consumerist bollocks’ like using totes rather than plastic bags. It’s made me more sure than ever that I need to support the people and groups who are taking matters into their own hands, taking direct action against the billionaires and all-powerful corporations who are hurtling us towards extinction while we argue with each other about paper straws.

From spending a lot of my childhood in pubs, I’m a swashbuckling pool player. I’m like Ronnie O’Sullivan, only more arrogant.

Going back drinking and hurting people again scares me the most in life. 

I’m sober and sane(ish) today. I’ve no idea about tomorrow. Recovery is not like Stars in Their Eyes. You don’t walk through the door as a cured person. I wake up every day with alcoholism and I have to treat it every day. I hope I keep doing that.

I often think about what it would have been like if my band, Exit: Pursued by a Bear, had become successful. If I wasn’t drinking my head off and going missing we might have had a shot.

I still miss the exhilaration of being on stage with a room full of people dancing to your music. If we’d become famous I’d probably be dead by now though, so you know, swings and roundabouts.

• Tadhg Hickey’s memoir, A Portrait of the Piss Artist as a Young Man, is out now. His show, The Marxist Terrorist-
  Supporting Scumbag, comes to Cork Opera House on September 28. Tickets €25 from corkoperahouse.ie