Wasted by Brian O'Connell Read Free Book Online Page A

slept, I helped myself to €100 from his wallet. I can still see myself doing it,
carefully reaching under his bed for the wallet, expertly opening the button clasp that held it closed and sliding out one of the larger notes. Of that group, he’s the only one I’m
still in contact with and I’ve never been able to admit what I did. Although I’m sure he was aware of it next morning. It didn’t really matter to me, though; I would have done
anything to be able to continue drinking. Would have fucked over anyone, and not thought twice about it. There were countless other incidents, including getting barred from late-night clubs,
abusing people verbally and not having any recollection next morning, and messing up relationships through serial infidelity.
    The French weekend got to me, though. It got to me because I was with a group, all with stable relationships and steady incomes. For that weekend, at least, they were on the same level as me,
out for a laugh and a good drink. Yet once the weekend ended they continued with their lives and I continued with mine. I had probably spent my week’s rent and child maintenance and would
spend the next week or two playing catchup, ducking and diving to try to cover the excess. It made me realise that my ‘friends’ could dip in and out of my life and take part in the
gregarious bits. I was stuck with it 24/7. I couldn’t opt out of it periodically. I remained unfulfilled, while they were laying life-markers—getting promoted, having children, buying
houses. And yet, if you ask any of them today should I have stopped drinking, they will probably say I shouldn’t have. But, as I’ve said, no one knows really the true torment of the
mind of a problem drinker. You don’t really even realise it yourself until long after the last hangover.
    On several occasions I didn’t turn up to collect my son as expected on Saturday mornings. My time with him was now condensed to 8-hour periods on a Saturday or Sunday—the
stereotypical McDonald’s dad. Because I didn’t have a proper room for him in whatever house I happened to be staying in, I would drop him back again in the evening. My timekeeping and
sense of days became more erratic. I was a father in name only, nothing of a moral guide and an increasing emotional void. This lasted for maybe two years, and looking back, I find it impossible to
reconcile myself now to that vacant father figure I had become. And of course I drank on the shame and the guilt of that.
    I recycled stories I had heard and passed them off as my own. I was a fraud. A phoney. A fantasist. It’s alarming the depths to which human self-delusion can sink. I pretended to be
writing a book, a sort of novel based on fact, or an ‘observational take on Ireland’s underbelly’. Other times, I assumed the guise of a big-shot music promoter, when the reality
was that I had lost a small fortune due to negligence and bad management and chaotic bookkeeping. With no transport, when I was in the music game I would take a bus to gigs which I was promoting.
If someone called me while I was en route, I’d pretend my car had broken down or that I had missed the train and was now having to endure the ‘nightmare of a bus journey!’
I’d say it out loud so the other people on the bus would be able to hear me. Yes, I was one of those incredibly annoying public-transport-grudging travellers. That’s how screwed your
head gets! The reality was that a car I did part own had been repossessed when I had left it into a garage for repairs and didn’t have the money to retrieve it. It was embarrassing for my
family, as a neighbour in Clare who owned a garage had organised the finance a year or so earlier. And now he had to call the finance company to arrange for it to be collected. His words were
‘That fella can’t even buy a breakfast. You’d better take it away.’
    Of course there was a dawning realisation that I couldn’t continue life the way it was.