John Leahy, Former Tipperary Hurler

My first drink was a flagon of Linden Village Cider, bought in a pub before a local disco in Mullinahone, County Tipperary. I was about twelve and a half or thirteen years of age. There were trees about five hundred yards from my house and we went there drinking before the disco. There used to be discos every second week, and a few months after that I was served in a pub for the first time. I was thirteen years of age and ended up with lads fifteen or sixteen. I remember I went with them and had a few pints of ale. I would have been a fairly quiet and calm type of person and very shy, but I changed that night. I went to the disco and had great craic and the whole lot. At the time I was working and had a few bob in my pocket. Two weeks later, I got really drunk and sick in the toilet, got into an argument with lads I was drinking with. Looking back, that tells me drink didn’t suit me—day one. From that drink to my last drink, there was periods of mayhem and trouble in my life and it all came and revolved around drink.

From the age of fifteen or sixteen, I was drinking more regular, often hanging around with older guys. In—two pubs in the village I couldn’t get served in. But at fifteen, I was drinking in one of them regularly and there was no issue out of it. We won the junior south final in 1985, when I was fifteen, and I was drinking in the pub after it, and there was no issue. But yet I couldn’t get served in the pub across the road until I was seventeen. In the early 1990s, I went to a sixteenth birthday party up there, and the place was serving sixteen-year-olds now. The culture had changed and there was acceptance there that hadn’t been there a decade earlier.

At sixteen or seventeen, I stopped drinking for a period. I got it into my mind to make the Tipperary minor hurling team. I remember Christmas 1986 and drinking hard. I was doing stuff like robbing drink in the bar and having the craic around the town—really drinking heavily. Waking up in the bed after Stephen’s Morning, I remember saying, ‘I’m not drinking any more.’ I had to be carried home the night before and don’t remember getting into the bed. I had probably wet the bed also and I said to myself, ‘That’s it now, I’m going training and making the Tipperary team.’

That year I drank two pints of ale shandy after the Munster final and I drank a few pints on the Sunday night of the All-Ireland and that was it. I didn’t drink for the rest of that year. I suppose the pattern changed when I went working. I got into the Tipperary senior hurling team at this point and started working with a beer company. I got into a routine where I would have a few pints on the weekend and that. Maybe after dinner on a Sunday I would have a few drinks and go into the disco in Clonmel. I would have had a car at the time and would have thought nothing about having three or four drinks before driving into town. Then we’d drink all night and drive home. We used to go out the back roads and I know that for loads of lads that was the pattern. Sunday night was the night to go out. In my time drinking that changed to Thursday nights and now it would seem to be Saturday night.

When I played with Tipperary I got a great start in 1989 and again in 1991, when we were in the All-Ireland. There was a great drinking culture around the matches at that time and the sport was different. I remember two or three of our guys before the All-Ireland in 1989 had a few pints on the Saturday night. We were staying in the Burlington and they went across the road to the lounge and had their two pints. That was a regular thing for a few of the players, through the championship. They’d have a few pints on the Saturday night. The first few years of the championship, when it was over, there was a great session after the last match. It could last for three or four days and the panel would stay together. Then we’d break up and mightn’t see each other until we went back training.

We might have a few pints after training on an odd night, and the last league match we’d have a session, then take a break and then back training.

I did that for maybe four years. Looking back, when I used to stop in January and train it was fine. But I suppose when I was twenty-two or twenty-three I found that it went to February when I stopped drinking and then it went to March and then to April. The last year of my drinking, playing with Tipperary, was 1996. I would have drank two weeks before we played in the championship. Now, if you told me that six or seven years previously, there is no way I would have believed you. What happened is that it gathered momentum. I remember after the All-Ireland in 1991, I put on ferocious weight for the championship in 1992. We played Cork and one of the selectors told me not to run with the ball, just to hit it when I got it because I wasn’t fit enough. That was all drink related.

I never drank at home. I suppose with the hurling, people liked to be in my company and with Tipperary on the crest of a wave they were getting information that would be linked directly to the camp. It was normal rural life. I would have went into pubs a lot of the time saying I would only have a cup of tea and [a] sandwich, and I’d nearly be waiting for someone to offer me a drink.

They might say, ‘Will you have a pint?’ and I’d say, ‘Ah, no, no.’ The pressure would come on and I’d have one and then maybe two and then that was it.

Down through the years I would have missed appointments and presentations of medals. With the drinking you are afraid if you leave you’ll miss something and yet it is the same thing every week.

From the age of thirteen no one ever really pulled me aside and said anything to me about the drinking. I remember a Guard saying something to me one night. He had twin sons my age and I was very drunk the night before and he spotted me walking down the street. He called me and said, ‘If I see you drinking again, I’ll kick the arse off you. Don’t let me catch you again.’ That was the only warning I got. The parents would have been onto me at home, because with the car and everything. But I didn’t see any danger with it.

With my job as a sales representative for Finches I was in pubs every day of the week and I would have prided myself on the fact that I didn’t drink. Yet I found I would get up in the morning and rush through my day’s work. I wouldn’t give customers time and would be watching the clock to try and get finished by four or half four so I could get back to my local. That was regular practice, particularly on a Monday. We had some great days’ drinking as well with good craic and banter. I could get to the pub some days at half four on a Monday and mightn’t leave that pub until Wednesday morning.

We’d drink all day Tuesday—be in the bar at half ten in the morning. I was always meant to be working that day but I had it set up so that the Tuesday run hadn’t to be in until Wednesday evening. I could double up with work on a Wednesday by ringing a few people. I wasn’t doing my job properly. Wednesday night I’d go up to a pub in Mullinahone and have three or four pints and then I’d come home. I was always last leaving the pub. On Thursdays I’d come into Clonmel into the nightclub and go drinking. God knows where I’d stay Thursday night, and I’d get up and do a bit of work Friday—it wouldn’t have been a busy day for the job. I’d probably go in and meet some lad for lunch and go off drinking for the day then. That would stay going until Sunday.

That was the pattern for the last nine to ten months of my drinking. I would have lost relationships with girls through my drinking. You wouldn’t give it time and would always be in the pub. I would have been caught two-timing and all that.

At that time, the mindset would have been that’s normal.

The last nine months, a friend had given up the drink himself and I would meet him once every month or every six weeks, and he’d often say, ‘John, do you think you’re drinking too much?’

‘Jaysus I’m not,’ I’d say, ‘no more than my friends.’

I never realised I was drinking every day of the week. I woke up loads of times dying, and saying, ‘I’m not drinking any more.’ I never blamed the drink, though, I blamed my system. I would be lying there with the head fried off me and I’d often have DTs and be thinking there were things under the bed and be afraid to get out of the bed and all that kind of stuff. But I never blamed the drink; I always thought there was something else wrong with me.

The crux in my drinking came when a few friends organised a trip to Manchester. It was an opportunity for a session after Christmas, which wouldn’t have been a good time with work, but I was going anyway and never told them at work I was going. We were going to see a match, heading over on a Friday night for the match Saturday. I never told work I was taking Friday off—I just rang in the order and took off.

Vodka and soda was my drink of choice and I was really, really drinking them. I remember the Friday night in Manchester we went out and had good craic. I was knocking these things down—two of the guys wouldn’t drink with me. On Saturday we went to the match, Aston Villa v Man United, and it ended up nil-all. We all went on the piss after and arrived back to the hotel after the night’s drinking. There were a couple of lads around the counter. Two of us went to the hotel bar for a drink and we started talking about the match with the lads at the bar. I said I would have loved to see a goal scored at Old Trafford. One of the guys couldn’t comprehend it, as I was a Liverpool supporter. I was saying, ‘What difference does it make?’ It stirred in me and I was drinking a glass of vodka and I flipped. With the glass in my hand, I punched the guy into the face. I thought, ‘What the fuck am I after doing?’ I remember I had to go out of the hotel and the next thing the police came and I was brought away and put in a cell that night. In the cell, it was the first real time I examined what had gone wrong with my life. When I looked back, there were two previous incidents when that aggression and anger was there. I remember another night at a work do when one word led to another and I lashed out again. I was reprimanded at work; I think that was five years previously. Maybe two or three years before that again, at a disco, I met a girl and her brother didn’t take it kindly and I lost it with the brother. Each incident ended up being more harmful to each person involved. That night in the cell I prayed and asked for help.

It was the first time it had sunk in that when I looked back at my life, every night I was in trouble I had drink taken. Lo and behold, the first man at my door was the friend who had been asking me about my drinking. I had to go to court first thing on a Monday morning and got bailed into a hostel.

He booked into a hotel and I was allowed to leave the hostel at seven in the morning and be back in for eleven at night. On the Wednesday I got bailed back to Ireland.

I had it in my mind I was going to get back to Ireland and head off to America. I remember deep down I had a lot of realities to face coming home, including my family, because the incident made national news in the papers. I had to ring my employer because I didn’t turn up for work. The employer wanted meet to me on a Tuesday and given that five years previously there had been an incident, this was not new to them. I thought I was going to be out of a job, and met the two directors of the company. They asked me what happened and asked was I going to do anything about it. By this time I had organised to go in for treatment so I told them I needed a month off. I remember I got a good bollicking and they went outside the door and said, ‘Your job will be there and we’ll suspend you without pay.’ That was the first break I got.

I had to meet the county board in Tipperary, which wasn’t nice either. They were fully supportive, though, once they saw I was doing something. So I did the month in treatment, and didn’t look back, really.

It’s thirteen years this year since I stopped drinking and it’s no coincidence that I haven’t been in trouble and I haven’t been locked up or in rows in that time. That shite hasn’t gone on in my life since I stopped drinking. It was a big readjustment. In 1996, I went back playing for Tipperary and back into work. I was as nervous going to my first call out as my first day in school, because I was out in the public domain again and people would have known about my story. I would have got a bit of grief from people in the street and so on. I got it on the pitch also—lads would have been throwing it at me about the incident in Manchester. They were all quite hurtful, and I used often say to myself, ‘Is it really worth putting myself in these positions?’ I contemplated not playing any more and some days I found it hard to get up and go training or to go to work.

I remember one chap in a rural village and he was only about twelve years of age. I came out of a shop and he threw this thing at me about Manchester and it shook me. I said to myself, ‘This will never leave me.’ I can still get it at times today. When I do go out or go to a drinking scene now, I have to be fairly vigilant and careful who I mix with and where I go. It can still be brought up. Even this year at an occasion I was at, it was brought up.

Usually, the person will be drunk and they may not mean it, but it’s still there and that is part of it. All I can do is not follow that behaviour today.

The fact that it was in the national media meant everyone in my locality and throughout Ireland knew I was in treatment for drink. I would have gotten a lot of support on how to handle things. My employers, as well, were a great help to me and I valued it. For my final court case, one of the company directors had broken his leg a few weeks previously and he travelled over to give a reference in court. I got a two-year suspended sentence and paid a fine of nine thousand pounds or thereabouts. The reference from my employer made a big difference.

A lot of my friends never considered me [as] having a drink problem, because I drank with them. A lot of them would have drank as much as me or more than me. Now, for me to give up drink I’m questioning their drinking. If you look at denial in Ireland people have an acceptance of the amount they drink and that level is very high.

For anyone trying to stop drinking or taking drugs, it is a lonely spot. I never touched it since and I have to say, coming out of treatment, the aftercare programme was a big help to me. The group were very caring and kind and I got a bit of mothering and that helped me a lot. I was twenty-six when I stopped drinking. The hurling helped and I would have been well known, so I had nothing to hide—it was all out there. I know for a lot of people there is a stigma for people having to tell their story. For me, there is nothing to find out about!

I currently work as an addiction counsellor at a treatment centre and see many changes in the way addiction is today. You no longer see the guy coming in with drink issues alone. It’s drink and drugs now and that culture has crept in in the last number of years.

In my time drinking, we hadn’t as many different types of drinks to choose from, either. There was either Smithwicks or bottles of Guinness or maybe a pint of ale. In terms of spirits you might have drank a vodka or brandy. Now you have all those alcopops and flavoured drinks, making them easier to drink and a lot higher in content. Drinks sponsorship has come into sport and as a nation we are painting the picture that drink is okay. The advertising culture is a bit manipulative and they have these small ‘drink sensibly’ logos. That’s all okay for the person who can drink normally, but for the person who can’t it’s a problem. I often hear people say they don’t have the same problems in France with the drinking with young people, who can drink wine and so on. Yet the law in France means there’s no alcohol advertising allowed. Liverpool played a few weeks ago and had to wear black on their jerseys because they are sponsored by Carlsberg. The Heineken Cup in rugby is called the H Cup. As a culture, there is panache in their policy and they are trying to combat it. In Ireland we’re quite the opposite.