50 ways TO LEAVE YOUR LOVER

Declan Lynch’s tales of addiction

As a youth, I worked for a summer in a pub in the West End of London, and the image that is branded on my brain is not some bacchanalian scene, but that of the two insurance men carrying attache cases, who came to the pub every day.

They were senior figures of some sort, in one of the big companies — ‘the men from the Pru’ was the generic term

— senior enough to be enjoying large vodka-tonics at around noon every day.

Later — numerous large vodka-tonics later — they would move to one of the great restaurants of Soho, switching from the vodkas to a selection of wines.

They were alcoholics, obviously, but you wouldn’t really know it. I mean, you would know by the amount they drank and the frequency of it, that they were alcoholics, but something about them tended to distract you from that. Something about the way that they wouldn’t be roaring drunk, just quietly soaking it up; something about their very Englishness...

So there is a cultural aspect to addiction, at least to our perceptions of it. The English, with their long lunches and their even longer cricket matches, have always found ways to pursue their alcoholism without drawing too much attention to themselves.

Indeed, one of the great curiosities of history is how it would all have turned out if Ireland had developed its liking for cricket instead of channelling those energies into the revival of hurling and Gaelic games in general — the idea of heading off to ‘the match’ for five days instead of just the one, has never really been tested on Paddy, and no doubt this is a blessing. We just tend to reveal more of ourselves, in drink — the main thing being that we probably shouldn’t be drinking.

But we have seen with Brexit, that certain English men have this ability to talk the most astounding load of

cobblers, as if they were calmly imparting the most profound wisdom of the ages. They are like those chaps from the ‘Pru’, horribly unwell, yet somehow able to pass themselves off as urbane men of the world.

Irish people, on the whole, are not able to do that, or at least they are not able to do it very well. There is some restlessness in the spirit that carries us into places we should not be going, some tragic desire to act out our drunkenness on the big stage.

Not for us the quiet, relentless tippling of the chap at Lord’s for the Test match, there is some childish need within us to reach out to those who are less drunk than ourselves. To be not just addicted, but seen to be addicted.

There is almost a performative aspect to it, leading to our wistful observations not just of the English but of the ‘European’ way, whereby they seem to have integrated their drinking into a mature lifestyle that has actual teenagers quaffing wine along with their meals as if this was a normal thing for teenagers to be doing — which it is, apparently, in these strange lands that are not ours.

And beyond these lands, there is America, where they would have had absolutely no trouble identifying ‘the men from the Pru’ as thoroughgoing alcoholics on day one.

I used to laugh at this ‘American standard’ — at how low they’d set the bar; at how you could qualify as an alcoholic far more easily in America than in these parts.

Then, one day, I realised that the Americans were right, that sometimes the best ideas come from there, as well as the worst ones. They had given us Alcoholics Anonymous, after all. It wasn’t Britain or Europe who came up with that one, and it certainly wasn’t Ireland. But we have taken to it, and to the idea that it’s better to get out of the game early, while you’re still standing. To leave the party, while you can.

“I used to laugh at this ‘American standard’, at how low they’d set the bar”