50 Ways To Leave Your Lover

Declan Lynch’s tales of addiction

The classical profile of the addict is someone who has a “large ego and low self-esteem”. And since this would encompass a great number of Irish people, you get a sense of why we seem to be especially vulnerable in these areas.

Yes, it is an excellent line, the one about the large ego and the low self-esteem — it kind of sums up the whole thing, really, and I guess the only thing to ask ourselves now is: what the hell does it mean?

I struggled with this one for a while, because I couldn’t find a simple way to explain to myself, or to anyone else, that crucial distinction between the two things

— indeed, were they not in fact roughly the same thing, the ego and the self-esteem? Well, no.

One of the better explanations of the ego/self-esteem conundrum was laid out for me by an alcoholic who felt that he was “the piece of shit that the universe revolves around”. So he was self-centred — self-obsessed, even — with an exaggerated sense of his own importance in the greater scheme; none of which stopped him from disliking himself intensely.

Addicts tend to have these unhealthy levels of self-loathing, this sense of deep inadequacy which they feel can only be corrected by whatever magical substance does it for them.

Though it’s a hard one to call, this, because I believe there is such a thing as a healthy level of self-loathing; that it is just not very intelligent to be thinking you’re a great fellow all the time.

Anyway, you can have the most profound hatred of yourself, for no good reason, and still you can believe that all meaningful activity would cease on this earth without the vital contribution that you are bringing to the party. Indeed, the first of these basic errors of judgment can exacerbate the second, especially when large quantities of whiskey are added to the equation.

Not only can this state of mind turn you into a degenerate, it can also harm your prospects of ever getting yourself free, because with your large ego, you find it so hard to imagine a world in which you are not drinking — like, will they bother having Christmas at all this year, if you’re not around to light it up with your boozy bonhomie?

It is a maddening combination, to be so self-absorbed and yet to be so fragile. And in Ireland, we’ve got it bad — indeed, if you’re looking for a working model of the large ego/low self-esteem issue as it applies to a country, you need only look at the way we are incessantly asking foreigners: what do you think of us?

We are anxious enough to need their approval, to ask such an embarrassing question straight out, but we are egotistical enough to accept only one answer: Paddy, you’re great.

And yet, in this country we also have the good fortune to have one infallible guide to this thing called self-esteem, a vision to which we can point and say: that is what it is, right there.

I refer, of course, to Pat Kenny. I have long cited Pat as one of the few Irish people, if not indeed the only one, who has this self-esteem thing licked. And I am not being in any way facetious about this; I think he is truly admirable for the leadership he has given in this regard.

There is no false modesty with Pat, no humble-bragging. He was even able to argue with RTE bosses that he was worth a large salary per annum, and he was able to back it up with logical arguments which he advanced without shame, the shame that keeps so many of his compatriots in thrall to their compulsions.

Pat is good, and he knows it, his whole being radiates this thing we call self-esteem, this elusive gene which so many of us Irish were just not born with, that we have to acquire somehow — by watching and listening, and yes, drinking a lot less would help enormously.

”It is a maddening combination, to be so self-absorbed and yet to be so fragile”