Fade out and fade in ten years later. Ten years of sobriety and I am getting tired. I have gotten every award you can win as an actor, but I still have not gotten a million dollars for any movie. There was a lot of respect, but still people were pointing their fingers at me: “You still have got to behave yourself, be a role model.” I saw all of my white contemporaries going back to what they were doing, using and all, and they were making millions of dollars, and I was sitting there, starting to say, “Well, fuck it” again, like before that moment in South Africa. And then the doctor tells me, “You are not doing too well. You’re going to die in six months.” And I said, “Well, why be sober? Why help somebody else?” I lined out all the stuff that I got high on. I got the best I could find. If I was going to die, I was going to do it high.
Nothing happened, just a mess on the table. I was not high, I was not stoned, and I was not sober, I was just very sick. I was too sick to get up. Absolutely nothing happened. I sat for about ten days, getting weaker and weaker. I sat and I watched the TV. The electricity went out, and the TV went off. I did not have any food, and I couldn’t go out the doors looking terrible.
I was 167 pounds and I was looking dead. I called my son and said, “I gotta go back to rehab.” So that was another moment of clarity. I had to have that slip. I really desperately needed to reach the worst part of my life to have the best time of my life today.
Through those ten days, I didn’t want to give up my best friend, the drugs and alcohol. It’s almost worse than a divorce when you know it is all over. No more fun! No more calling the girls in. No more of the giggles. It is a terribly tragic feeling—now what? But the fact is, it hadn’t been fun and giggles for a while. And then you go from there to maybe the third week of that thirty days in rehab and the family is there—everybody’s family is there—and people start breaking down. I just broke down, especially to my son. I said, “I am sorry,” and I was.
In some sense, every black person in America is carrying the yoke of the Africans, carrying the yoke of the African Americans like Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King. But I’ve learned that in order to be of any value, I have to carry my own burden, I have to look at my own self and deal with that. I say it in my autobiography, the worst resentment that an addict or an alcoholic can ever have is one that he feels justified to keep.
162 | moments of clarity
That is the worst poison in anybody’s system, whether alcoholic or not. It closes all the doors, wears you down. I don’t know what it is or where it comes from, but it seems to be happening all over the world today. People are blowing themselves up to make a point. I almost did. It doesn’t make any sense.
God looks like everything I see. God is the way you are looking at me. God is my cat. God is the alpha and the omega, and I see him in everybody and everything I see. He sends somebody to look like Jesus or Allah or Buddha or Muhammad. I hang out with a lot of rock and rollers in some meetings, and they’re always talking, “Gee, I wonder what God really looks like, what Jesus looks like.” They’ll say, “I think He looks like a combination of Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan, what do you think, Lou?” So I look at them with a smile and I say, “Well, the last time I looked at things, She looks like Tina Turner.”
I ask God every morning, “What do I do?” There is a moment of clarity every morning now. I am not in charge. I thought I was in charge before; I never really was. That is a big yoke off my neck. God is in charge always. He was in charge before I was alive, He is in charge while I am alive, and He will be in charge after I am gone. The Saint Francis Prayer is my prayer on a daily basis. Where there is darkness, you bring light. Where there is sadness, you bring joy. Where there is hatred, you bring love.
Malachy McCourt
I feel connected to Malachy on so many levels: the Irishness, the love of acting and story-telling, the dark history with drinking and drugging. He also makes it easy to connect with him because he’s so open. He’s written several books, including two memoirs; he’s appeared in many movies and TV series and soap operas, including a recurring role as Father Clarence, who dispenses wise holiday-season advice to the citizens of All My Children’s Pine Valley. I’ve always known him to speak his mind, so I knew his story would be worth reading.
I
t’s all simple, you know. That’s the great thing—this getting sober is so simple. It isn’t that there’s nothing to it, it’s not easy, but it is simple. You’re perfectly safe doing what you need to do, and it is okay to be
selfish, in a sense. Take care of yourself, because you can do fuck- all for anybody else if you don’t take care of yourself. The more you begin to realize it’s a disease, you begin to realize the lunacy of it, the insanity of it—“Oh, I did all of that, yes, I did that, I did that”—and then you learn about making amends and how you can go about that. And it’s all right if you’re not forgiven. Some people will not forgive you. I always thought you have to be forgiven, otherwise you haven’t done the right thing. But the right thing is always the right thing.
I wish I hadn’t gone through all of that, I wish I hadn’t done such damage to my first wife and my children then, and to other people over the years. I wish I hadn’t, but I’m trying to make amends as best I can. At least I know I ought not to be damaging people, doing damage to them or to myself. Doing damage to people—particularly children—does terrible damage to yourself. I found that out. Did I have to go through that to reach the point of healing? I mean it’s the old joke about knocking your head against the wall. Why are you doing that? Because it’s so nice when you stop. Was it necessary I go through all of that? Well, then the question arises—if you’re not carrying a burden, would you know the relief of putting it down?
We all get sober and clean eventually, but it’s best to do it while we are alive. It’s much more fun.
I was born in Brooklyn, and due to a set of sort of tragic events in the family, including the death of a sister, we took off to Ireland, and that’s where I grew up. It was a very poor neighborhood—it wasn’t poor, it was poverty-stricken, really. I was a reasonably good-looking kid, but with a terrible low self-esteem, very stupid in school. I couldn’t comprehend what it was they were on about there at all—I failed everything—and so I left and went to work at a bunch of menial jobs in England and Ireland. I came back to America when I was twenty-one. I worked at the usual again, on the docks and so on, and then got my sails for a while, got into the theater and by remarkable accident became an actor. I became a bartender and then became a bar owner and got married, divorced, became an alcoholic, was an alcoholic, two children through that marriage, and what else did I do? I got on the radio, continued the acting, continued the saloon business, got married again, and took up writing when I was fifty-four, and I’ve published eight books since then.
And I would say that out of all of this, the greatest achievement was finding self-worth. That’s the greatest thing, finding out that I really deserve to live. That is very important to me. If I could say something to that twenty-one-year-old boy, I would tell him, “If you have felt like one of life’s discards, if you have felt unloved and you have felt disrespected— you don’t have to go through that. All you need to do is keep control of your senses. Do not drink or drug, because you can’t handle it. Do not damage your health with cigarettes. Realize that you’re a talented and lovable human being, and start off by giving yourself a big hug, an embrace. Just do the right thing, tell the truth, and be what you are inside, a human.”
I say this quite consciously and clearly, that the organized Catholic Church in Ireland was very cruel if you didn’t have money or if you weren’t of a certain class. You eventually become the thing you hate the most, and so many of the Irish became imitators of the snobbery that was the way the English treated the Irish. I still think that the English are my superiors intellectually, morally, and educationally. I was abused sexually by three priests at various times, not very seriously but enough to make me feel dirty and ashamed of myself
because I thought it must be me, I had done something wrong. When I realized it was their fault, it wasn’t me, that turned me off organized religion totally.
School was more brutal than anything. There was no love of learning. It was inculcation by the fist and by the stick and by ridicule of children. There was no love of learning. The only thing that saved me then was reading. I was an omnivorous reader, but I failed everything. There is an exam that one takes in Ireland at the age of twelve, which is the primary examination. You can’t go on to high school or secondary school without it. My scores were not good enough for that, so I left school when I was thirteen. Here I am without a spiritual life, without a formal education, a shameful situation at home with the poverty and my mother sleeping with this guy and my father gone and all this kind of stuff. It was a total wreckage.
At the same time, I became a very cunning guy. I realized that the way I was going to make my way was by charm, so that’s how I got through, by charming people. My brother Frank was short-tempered, he glared and shouted at people, “fuck them” and all that, so he was considered the odd one, where I was more the peacemaker, the charmer.
The sequence here is quite clear in my head because it had to do with coming to America and finding a certain amount of respect. People would say, “You’re funny,” or “You’re very bright,” people would pay me compliments. I wouldn’t quite believe them, but it began to seep in. Frank and myself, we wrote this play, A Couple of Blaggards, and we had done it here in New York. By then I had been reasonably successful in the saloon business and on the stage, doing television and that sort of thing—no great success but it was okay. Far more than I thought I could expect coming from the slums of Limerick.
Then we decided to take this play of ours to Limerick, and in my head there was this idea: “I am going to show these fuckers, all these institutions that have failed us, the church, the schools, the charitable institutions, and the educational system—I am going to show them all what I have done.” We went back there and did this play, and I’m expecting people to say, “We’re sorry for what we did to you” and all—but there was nobody left to say it. No representatives of these institutions ever came up and bowed down and said, “We’re sorry for what we did.” Of course it’s totally unrealistic to expect that kind of thing, but I did expect it and it didn’t happen. I got more and more frustrated, and drank more and drank angrily, and got more and more depressed.
I came back from there in July of 1965 in a terrible state. I felt wretched, I felt awful, I felt physically and mentally ill, and spiritually I felt absolutely destroyed. I didn’t know why. I went to a physician I knew and he examined me pretty thoroughly and he said, “I can find nothing wrong with you organically, but I can tell you this. I know that you are drinking too much, you are smoking too much, and you are eating too much, and that’s the diagnosis.” I said, “And the cure? What are you going to give me for that?” He said, “I’ll give you two things. I’ll give you a boot in the ass and I’ll give you a bill if you don’t fuck off out of here, because you know what to do. You’re a very bright man, McCourt, you know what to do.”
I left that office thinking it out like this. “The drinking is no problem,” said I to myself, “and then you can’t have a drink without a cigarette, so I know what it is, it’s fucking food is the problem.” I started searching out what I would do, and the truth is that my entry into recovery was a program for overeaters. I’m looking at these charts there, and all the sayings, it all has to do with alcohol, but they just substitute food. So then I decided to stop drinking, but the thing is, you can eat some but you can’t drink some, so I was thoroughly confused by this. I realized, “You’re fooling yourself there, kiddo. Drop it, stop the denial, and go for it. Go to a recovery meeting.” I decided I would go, but I’m not going to accept this God crap that they have. I was always going around saying, “I’m an atheist, thank God,” that was my mantra.
The first meeting I was told, “You don’t have to drink anymore.” You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be, you don’t have to pretend anymore, you don’t have to put on a show, you don’t have to be charming or witty or anything. You can just be honest, and that was fantastic. Then somebody said, “You are in the safest place you can be.” I looked around and the guy said, “Nothing can assault you here, nothing can attack you here, and nobody will attack you here.” I found myself saying, “Oh really, that’s nice.” I felt my shoulders ease, no more tension; my shoulders weren’t up around my ears. I felt that portion of the body between the eyes relax. I found my jaw relaxing, the teeth weren’t grinding together, and I had that lovely feeling of “Ahh, I’m at ease.” All I need to do now is just do my best. I always remembered what Mark Twain said: “In case of doubt, tell the truth,” and I have amended that to “In case of doubt, do the right thing.” That has been my guide ever since.
I’m fairly certain that addiction comes with being born. Just like our head comes with our body, addiction comes with us. I’m convinced of this. I think that as little children, when we get our buckets to play with, the ordinary normal child would fill up these buckets with sand and make sand castles, you see, and we—the addicted, the alcoholic—we fill ours up with shit. Somebody says, “Your buckets are full of shit!” so you put down the buckets and get two bigger buckets and fill them up with more shit. We go through life filling up our buckets with shit, and we struggle. People tell us to put down the shit, and we say, “No, I can’t. It doesn’t matter, I’m used to it.” And then we get to a point where we are told, “Look, what you ought to do is, there’s this higher power that has a huge cold storage facility for shit, and you can hand in your buckets, get a receipt, and you can have your shit back any time you want, hot or cold.” Now that it’s in storage, the less you’re going to want it, but putting your shit down is the real key, because it opens your hands. You can’t give or receive the grace of God or Allah or whoever with your hands closed tight around the handles of your buckets of shit. So you open your hands, you open your mind, you open your heart, you can open your nostrils because you don’t have to be breathing stink, you can open everything, just be open to what is great and good in this world, and you’ll be able to hand over what is not.
Diana, my wife, gave me a thing to hang in my office which says, “Good morning. This is God. I will be handling all your affairs today, and I will not need your help. Have a nice day.” Isn’t that great? That has helped me a lot. So yes, I believe in the power, the greater power, the higher power. To me, it’s an amorphous, mysterious power that I don’t understand, but I don’t have to. My understanding is, there’s a power greater than myself, and I can invoke that power, ask its help. It may come and it may not, but that’s not my business. All I can do is do what I need to do on a daily basis. I feel like I’m sublimely devoid of knowledge. What I am is a conveyor of divinity, and that’s all I am.
I guess the operative phrase for me was “You’re in a safe place.” Immediately I relaxed. And actually, when I think about it, I’m in a safe place anywhere I go so long as I don’t drink. That was the moment for me, hearing that man tell me, “You’re in a safe place.”
Growing up in a slum, growing up in poverty, leaves you with that same residue that alcohol leaves you with, the residue of shame and fear. Shame takes care of the past, turns it into something terrible that’s been done to you or something you’ve done or thought about doing. That’s shame. Fear is firmly rooted in the future and it makes sure to ruin that for you too. The shame says, “Look what you did, look what you are, you’ll never be anybody.” Fear says, “Don’t come up here, don’t even attempt to come up here, to make yourself any better, because you’re a piece of shit, just look at your past.” You have to dismiss the two of them and say, “I’m living in the present, I have the gift of the present.” Present, gift—the words are so similar. I stay here, in the moment, I don’t get into the future.
Mike Judge, who was my brother in recovery, was a Fran
ciscan priest, killed on 9/11. He said to me once, “What are you worrying about?” I said, “I’m worried about the future. I’m old and washed-up and going nowhere. I don’t know how to make any money, I’m deeply in debt,” and on and on. And he said, “Well, the God I believe in, the God I’ve asked to look after you too—that God is very busy, so busy He has not yet made tomorrow, that future which you’re so worried about.” I said, “Yeah?” And Mike said, “He doesn’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow because it ain’t here yet, and you can’t tell a future that’s not made. So as all-powerful and all-knowing as He is, He doesn’t know. So who the fuck do you think you are?”
So I don’t attempt that. I listen. I listen to my kids, listen to Diana. She had a serious operation, and I stayed at the hospital with her for six nights and it was very tense because I just thought, “Oh my God, what if I lose her?” and I just kept telling myself that tomorrow wasn’t here yet. The lads in recovery were great. They called me and they told me they were thinking about her and me. They became such good friends, all of them, and a lot of them I don’t even know their last names. I’m so blessed, so blessed to be sober. The decency of it, the generosity of sobriety is astounding. It’s the way, it’s the path, that’s what it is. I know it’s a long road, as long as I’ve got.
Alcoholism is about loss, primarily loss of love—that which we cannot live without. In a program of recovery I found out about love and am empowered to be able to open my whole being to the love offered by my friend and spouse, Diana. She also taught me to return that love to all my family, to be honest, to stick to the program, and that we can surrender without being defeated and that we can be elevated without getting above ourselves.
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