When Marian Keyes was treated with alcohol addiction in Dublin’s Rutland Centre in the 1990s, she wasn’t just concerned with getting better, she was concerned with getting the other patients to like her.
“Addiction is the please love me disease. The other patients in the Rutland - I made sure they liked me, I was so nice,” the author says of that challenging time.
Keyes describes the period of her life as “frightening” and says it was especially challenging for her family and loved ones.
“When somebody is an addict or an alcoholic and you finally get them into rehab, I think people often expect that rehab will do some sort of magic”.
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“When people who love the addict realise that they have to go into rehab to actually spell it out for them how it was, they are frightened really”.
“I was so manipulative,” Keyes tells podcast host Róisín Ingle. ”I was just so about self-pity and trying to make everyone feel sorry for me so that they would feel mortified about telling me the ugly truth”.
The writer’s own experience served as inspiration for her best-selling novel Rachel’s Holiday - the basis for RTÉ’s The Walsh Sisters.
Speaking on The Women’s podcast with Stefanie Preissner who adapted the material for the screen, Keyes says that watching episode one was “very odd”.
“Seeing her [Rachel] comatose on the bed and thinking: ‘Oh my god that was me’. I found it very moving and very sad.”
You can listen back to this conversation in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
In association with Kildare Village.
The Walsh Sisters is on Sunday night on RTE 1 at 9:30pm
You can also listen to the official Walsh Sisters Podcast - presented by Marian and Stefanie - wherever you get your podcasts.
