It struck me the other day that much of the art I’ve been consuming lately is about addiction and recovery. Addiction thrives in secrecy and shame, so the use of substances to escape or to numb is a subject I wish we talked more about more openly. And by substances I am talking as much about shopping or food or sex or love or smartphones as I am about alcohol or heroin or cocaine. And by addicts I mean the stylish woman next door who seems, on the outside, to have it all together. By addicts, I mean the man in your office who has a PhD in putting on a brave face.
Addicts are everywhere. We all know them. The people who think they don’t know any addicts just need to open their eyes a bit wider, no offence to them. Some of us are addicts ourselves. Or we’re in recovery from addiction, a state that can feel almost miraculous. We all know people who have never succumbed to addiction. I used to look at these people with awe. There but for the grace of whatever deity they are having themselves go all of them, is what I think now.
I have friends who’ve been sober for decades. I have friends who are newly sober. People I love have hit rock bottom and come clean and relapsed and struggled and returned to sobriety. Other people I love are still struggling. I am doing much better myself, thanks for asking. I consider food to be my primary addiction. For a long time it’s been a way to cope with feelings I haven’t wanted to feel. I’ve been working on this since I was a teenager. I will be working on it for the rest of my life. I am more hopeful about it now than ever.
I don’t know if I was addicted to alcohol but I know I drank far too much of that substance, mostly white wine, than was healthy for my mind or my body or my soul. A serious medical diagnosis came as a massive shock that shunted me into sobriety. My immediate instinct was to hit the wine bottle really hard in an attempt to make all the unbearable feelings of fear and horror go away. Then, whispering through the shock, came a gentle voice. She said that not only would the alcohol not help but that it would make everything I was experiencing and everything I was about to experience so much worse. Luckily, I believed Her. Facing my fears without alcohol has been a revelation. A gift. It gave me clarity of mind. It gave me hope and strength. It’s a gift that nearly two years later keeps on giving.
Róisín Ingle: Facing my fears without alcohol has been a revelation
Róisín Ingle: I sat at the childhood piano Paul McCartney played, and bashed out Let It Be
Manchán Magan was a great man for a video message. You’d never know what you might get
I walk around the block and think of dead friends who don’t feel dead to me
Art about addiction is important and uplifting and essential. Last week I went to see Poor in the Gate Theatre. An exceptional Irish talent, Sonya Kelly has adapted Katriona O’Sullivan’s bestselling memoir into a compelling play. O’Sullivan’s mother and father suffered with addiction, and so did she. There are many beautiful moments in this work, but one of them shows the superb Aisling O’Mara as O’Sullivan sitting on a sofa reluctantly attending early counselling sessions. As she grows more comfortable opening up about the reasons for her addictions, the sofa moves closer and closer to her counsellor. It is a gorgeous visual metaphor for the power and healing that can come from speaking honestly about the roots of addiction.
Every Sunday night, I’ve been sitting down with my daughters and my husband to watch The Walsh Sisters on RTÉ 1. In her fiction and in real life, Marian Keyes has been one of the most vital voices on addiction this country has ever known. This series, written by Stefanie Preissner, focuses a lot on Keyes’s novel Rachel’s Holiday in which a young, middle-class Dublin woman goes into rehab to deal with her drug and alcohol addictions. Just as when the novel was published nearly 30 years ago, Rachel, played by an illuminating Caroline Menton, is prompting important conversations about addiction in homes all over the country – including mine.
Also lately, I’ve been listening (and re-listening) to Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir All the Way Down to the River, which is about her sex and love addiction and the chaotic relationship she experienced with her late, beloved partner Rayya Elias, who had terminal cancer. Gilbert is the author of the memoir phenomenon Eat, Pray, Love. As Oprah Winfrey said during a recent interview, she is the woman many of us thought had everything sorted. Gilbert, it turns out, did not have everything sorted.
Before I downloaded the book myself, I read all of the reviews. Some of them were not kind, calling Gilbert “self indulgent” or “irksome”. Another reviewer said the book was “excruciating” to read. For this reader, most of the reviewers missed the point.
It is almost impossible to follow a memoir as culturally significant and as mercilessly parodied as Eat, Pray, Love. But I don’t see this book as an attempt to follow anything. It is a book that explores addiction and recovery in all its complexity. In my view, it succeeds. All the Way Down to the River is one of the best books about addiction and recovery you will ever read.
So many of us are in so much pain. Addiction thrives in shame and secrecy. We desperately need great art about addiction. Thank you to everyone, everywhere who tries to make it.
