Journalist tells of battle with the bottle

Broadcaster Fergal Keane laid bare his battle with the bottle today at an international conference on addiction.

Introducing himself as “Fergal Keane the alcoholic, Fergal Keane the addict”, he made a powerful plea for a change in society’s mindset about addiction.

Addressing the conference at the University of Ulster’s Jordanstown campus outside Belfast, he spoke movingly about sinking deeper and deeper into alcoholism but not seeking help as his career was going from strength to strength.

The journalist, who reported from many of the world’s trouble spots, including Rwanda, hid his drinking from those around him until he finally realised he had to seek help.

Keane, who wrote about his problems with alcohol earlier this year in his autobiography, was brought up in Dublin, the son of an alcoholic father and mother who drank a bottle of port the night before his birth to hurry things along.

“I may have arrived in this world already drunk,” he said.

Seven years ago he sought treatment and hasn’t touched a drop since, he said. He described the treatment in a centre as “28 days of pretty unmitigating pain”.

He said public perceptions of alcoholics needed to change and it needed people like him in the media to help.

Keane recalled that when his book was published one reviewer had described his admissions of alcoholism as either mad or very brave – he said he hadn’t realised what the reviewer was getting at until he read the tabloids.

He branded much of the media response to the issue of alcoholism and addiction as “childish, infantile and extremely dangerous”.

The focus was invariably on the famous footballer, the famous actor or the famous singer, not the doctor, nurse, teacher, bank manager or journalist. He said the issue was invariably treated as some kind of a freak show.

Seared into his brain was a TV appearance by the now dead actor Oliver Reed in which he was encouraged to perform Wild Thing while “clearly drunk out of his mind”.

“This is replayed endlessly as one of the great TV moments,” he said admitting that when younger he had found it hilarious.

“Now I look at it and I see a man in the final stages of a terminal illness being turned into a public spectacle by people who should know better.”

He asked: “Would you stick anybody else with a terminal illness on TV and make fun of them in that way, of course you wouldn’t.”

It happens, he said, because there was a kind of public perception that alcoholics were to be laughed at by the media because of their outrageous behaviour.

People needed to try to understand the addiction as an illness, a disease, he said.

Presenting it as a moral failure or freak show “is just not good enough in this day and age, not when we know as much as we do about the nature of alcoholism and the nature of all kinds of addiction”.

But he told his audience, many who work in the field of alcohol or drug addiction, that they too needed to get their act together and present a better public face.

They need a “bit more unity and a bit more sense of purpose” when it came to articulating their message. “Who gets noticed, gets the funding,” he said.

The broadcaster was the keynote speaker at the opening of the three-day international conference attended by experts including professors of addiction studies, and senior lecturers in public health and nursing.

The gathering aims to present current research findings on addictions helping to enhance the skills of the professionals and non-professionals attending.

Investigating current policy initiatives and determining their impact on future services formed an important part of the conference agenda.

Organiser, Victor Robinson, an Ulster University lecturer, said: “This is an international event that brings together a diverse range of associated organisations throughout the world within the fields of addiction.”

Mr Robinson, who teaches in the School of Nursing added: “Many individuals and groups have been attracted to this event who in their own right have achieved international recognition within their own fields of endeavour.”