Nickey Rackard in his own words – part 3
IN PART THREE OF THIS EXTRAORDINARY SERIES, WE CONTINUE THE LATE NICKEY RACKARD’S MOVING STORY OF HIS STRUGGLE WITH ALCOHOL, AS TOLD TO THE SUNDAY PRESS IN A SERIES OF ARTICLES IN 1975, MONTHS BEFORE BEFORE HIS DEATH. IN THIS ACCOUNT, HE WROTE ABOUT HIS CHAOTIC LIFESTYLE, THE BINGES, BLACKOUTS AND POSTDRINKING DEPRESSIONS AND HIS CONTINUING REFUSAL TO ACCEPT HE WAS AN ALCOHOLIC
This article first appeared in the Sunday Press on September 21, 1975
CELEBRATONS after Wexford won the All-Ireland in 1955 and 1956 were wild and prolonged, yet I didn’t touch a drink. I stuck to the pledge I had taken in 1951 after the death of a friend of mine, a priest with whom I used to shoot and fish.
As we would be dining in his house after a day’s shooting, I’d have a drink and he would always remark: ‘Nick, I’m going to give you the pledge’, but I just wouldn’t take it. I liked the drink and the company and the fun.
Then he died. After the burial, his brother, also a priest came to me and said: ‘Come on now Nick. He always wanted you to take the pledge and I’m going to give it to you’. For no good reason, I went back to the house with him and took the pledge.
And surprisingly, it was no bother to me to keep it, even though the county was on its way up again in hurling and the opportunities for drinking and free drink were many.
Good years
They were the good years, the five years I was on the dry. I built up a good practice, kept busy, was hurling, though easing out of football, and in 1953, I got married.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, not even when we reached New York in 1957, the recognised award for having won the All-Ireland. Not even when we returned from the American trip and my pledge left behind me. For I had succumbed to the American hospitality and had a few beers. I had got tight. Nothing wild. Nothing to worry about. I didn’t see that I had a drink problem.
Of course, in the years I was drinking, I didn’t think I had a problem either. With the lads in college, I drank and we went to dances and had sing-songs and got drunk, but I didn’t see the drink as a problem.
Reason why
Really, the reason I started to drink was that I was very shy. Sober, I could hardly talk to girls at dances. With a few drinks I was relaxed and out-going. At first, I’d have a few drinks to loosen me up going to the hop. Then it became a few drinks before the hop. Then it became a lot of drinks and into the hop when the pubs were closed.
Now that I know a lot more about the problem, I know that basically I was immature. That was why I drank – to break down the barriers which made me uncomfortable in mixed company. I was too immature to face up to life and to take it and myself as we were.
Of course, I didn’t know that my drinking during the college years was following the classic pattern of alcoholism. When I left college and set up as a vet, the pattern remained the same. Except that now I ran a car – and smashed up a couple of them. I still didn’t acknowledge that I had a problem, and then when I took the pledge and kept it for five years, I was more sure than ever that I could handle drink, ‘ like a man’ as they say.
And here, I must remark that in Ireland while the alcoholic carries a stigma, unjustly, the drunk is treated with a sort of amused tolerance. Heavy drinking and ‘ holding it’ semes to be regarded as a manly virtue by most people and the wildest escapades are excused on the grounds of ‘a few jars’.
But mention alcoholism and the good people immediately conjure up a vision of a Skid Row character, dirty, unhsaven, smellym, with a half consumed bottle of cheap wine spilling over his prone figure, and they figuratively walk on the other side of the street.
Actually, that type of alcoholic is rare. The World Health Organisation estimates that only five per cent of sufferers from the disease wind up on Skid Row.
But to resume my story. When I came back from New York in 1957, I was no longer ‘dry’. I was taking a few drinks, a few pints, and as time went on and I was up to my ears in work, I was drinking only on Sundays. Once again, the warning bells should have rung. You see, the people I was drinking with weren’t drinking fast enough for me.
When I was ordering a drink, I’d have a double for myself, and my companions must have though I’d got weak kidneys, I made so many visits to the toilet. They weren’t to know that each time I went out, I had a quickie at the bar.
Gradually, from Sunday drinking, it became weekend drinking. Saturday nights became a regular feature of drink. Then on Fridays. After a hard