It broke my heart to stop drinking but if I didn’t, I’d be dead now
Author Marian Keyes on being teetotal for 30 years
SHE wrote a best-selling novel about a young woman becoming sober.
And now, two decades after releasing Rachel’s Holiday, author Marian Keyes celebrates 30 years of being teetotal herself.
Revealing the milestone, the Limerick native admitted it ‘broke my heart to stop drinking’, but added that ‘if I’d kept drinking I’d probably be dead by now’.
The broadcaster and awardwinning author went to rehab for her alcoholism in January 1994 after a suicide attempt when she was 30 and has not had a drink since.
In an Instagram post last week that has been liked 29,000 times, the 60-year-old writer revealed: ‘When I realised the game was up with alcohol, I was devastated.
‘I didn’t think I was an alcoholic, I just thought life was hard, but facing a life without
‘I discovered how wrong I’d been’
it, I thought I’d be better off dead. As the sober seconds of my life began to stack up, I discovered how wrong I’d been about everything. I only truly began living when I said goodbye to alcohol.’
Her post was flooded with comments from the likes of writer and podcaster Elizabeth Day, who wrote How To Fail, and Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You, thanking Ms Keyes and congratulating her.
Four months before she gave up drinking, she wrote a short story and sent it to a publisher on a whim.
The year after she left rehab her first novel, Watermelon, was published and she got married two years later.
The next year, Ms Keyes released her career-defining novel Rachel’s Holiday, about a woman dealing with drug and alcohol addiction in rehab, which sold 1.5million copies worldwide.
In her latest Instagram post, the BBC presenter reflected: ‘I am so happy. I’m not trying to boast but I’m just telling anyone out there who is struggling that it is possible to do this one second at a time.
‘If I’d kept drinking I’d probably be dead by now. Instead, I’m alive, I’m in the flow of life, I love a LOT of people and get joy from SO much [at the moment it’s Ghosts on BBC1]. ‘If you’re struggling with addiction, my heart hurts for you [and those around you] but I promise that it’s possible to stop and – one second at a time – to stay stopped.
‘With love, compassion, empathy and boundless gratitude to all the incredible people who have helped me over the last 30 years.’
Ms Keyes said that rehab was ‘one of the happiest times of my life in a bizarre way’, adding: ‘It sounds very grim but it’s not.
‘The bond that you form with people in your group, the other walking wounded... we’re all trying to help each other. It was very beautiful.’
Ms Keyes’s parents checked her into the rehabilitation centre 30 years ago.
Her father died of Alzheimer’s in 2018 and she dedicated her 2022 book Again, Rachel to her mother – with whom she has unexpectedly ‘fallen in love’ after years of a ‘robust relationship’.
Ms Keyes has gone on to publish 23 books in total, which have sold 35million copies worldwide.
‘I promise it’s possible to stop’