Ciarán O'Driscoll

Thanks for having me.

I suppose it's my first time doing anything like this, like, you know?

I usually do everything in the background, you know?

Everything was done in the background, like, you know?

And if I can help someone, you know, if I can help someone here today.

grew up in the north side of cork city i grew up in the kind of my father was an alcoholic like you know i grew up in a kind of a broken home you know mother was a lovely woman dad was an alcoholic and i was involved in sport i was involved in soccer gaelic football played a bit of hurling involved in an awful lot of stuff i was super shy i was super shy like growing up like you know so that's when substance alcohol and substance came into it like you know i i

I drank at a very young age.

I didn't get drunk at a very young age.

I drank at a very young age.

We used to be taking cans and stuff.

We used to be going in and out of house parties where we lived and we were stealing cans of beer and stuff and drinking them up around the corner and all that.

My first drunk would have been, I would have made my confirmation in April, the June weekend.

That June weekend was my first drunk, like, you know.

And I loved what it did to me, you know.

All the shyness went away and, you know, I came out of myself, like, you know.

it gave me false confidence for a long time like you know and then there was there was other stuff like people were telling me there's this and there was magic mushrooms people were asking me we went pick magic mushrooms at one stage um i started taking lsd then i started going to school taking lsd and stuff

And then the night of our junior sort, I had contacts and stuff.

We took XC tablets to celebrate our junior sort results.

I ended up in the mercy the following morning.

And the same nurse, I think that was 94, the same nurse in 1997, I think about three years to the day, she stood over me again.