Love/Hate star Brían F O’Byrne revealed he had to stop drinking alcohol because it was ‘controlling’ his life.
The Tony award winning actor, who is known for playing DI Mick Moynihan on the hit RTE drama, stopped drinking 18 years ago, after he realised he had a problem.
Recalling his journey to sobriety, and his days filled with ‘guilt and shame’ before hand, he told The Ryan Tubridy Show on RTE Radio 1 : “I had to stop.
“It ended up controlling my life in a way that was very, very, very negative.
“The problem with me with alcohol was I could stop but I couldn’t stay stopped.
“The other problem was I didn’t know that if I took a drink if I was going to have a couple of drinks or if I would enter a blackout.
“And that’s a problem. If you just take a drink and you don’t know the effect it’s going to have on your life or what is going to happen I should say, what is going to happen in the coming hours, that’s not good.”
The BAFTA winning star, 53, admitted that despite his life looking like a success on the outside, he felt like a ‘shell of a person’ on the inside during his darkest days.
“You feel full of shame because you end up in places you shouldn’t be and your life starts to spin out of control in a way that is bewildering.
“I was doing shows on Broadway.
“I’d several Tony nominations and everything, and from the outside my life looked pretty good, I guess.
“But, with me, I was a shell of a person, wracked with shame and guilt and bewilderment of how life worked.
“I seemed to look around at life and go, ‘How do these people know how to live?’
“And I was not at school that day when they gave out the book. It was a bizarre thing,” he recounted.
The award-winning actor, now based in Sligo, joined the show from Sligo University Hospital as he waited for his daughter to be discharged after having her appendix removed.
Byrne told how he sympathised with those struggling with addictions throughout lockdowns and the pandemic.
And recalling the ‘turning point’ in his life, which occurred after he famously ran onto a pitch in Giants stadium at the World Cup in 1994 during ‘a black out’, the Broadway star also offered advice to those who feel like they need to make a change in their lives.
“Thankfully, there’s endless amount of ways and people to help stop drinking.
“So, if someone is listening and they’re going, ‘Do you know what?
“For some reason, I don’t know how to... I end up drinking more than I want’, well, you can just try and stop for a little while.
“But if it keeps keep happening, and it just seems to slip away from you...
“There’s a saying that if you’re on an elevator and it’s going down, it’s better to get off at any time - you don’t have to wait until it’s the very, very, very, very bottom to get off.”
He added: “Isolation is a big thing for anyone with addiction. Our favourite place is to pull down the curtains and just stay inside and look for oblivion.
“So, this is an opportunity for a lot of addicts, and I feel so sorry for people who are living with addicts now at home.
“An addict is like a cornered rat - I speak for myself - a cornered rat when put up against a situation where they cannot get what they need for them to get through the day.
Because they need it - they feel they need it. And then to witness that going, ‘What is wrong with you? You’re killing yourself’.
“But the person in the corner has no idea; they’re trying to live for the day. They’re trying to survive - today.”
