Chapter 6

After leaving treatment at Cuan Mhuire, I moved back into my parents' house. One of the people in charge, Liam, arranged a meeting with my parents, sister and her husband. They came in and we had a lovely meeting in the office and they told me how much they loved me and all that kind of stuff. My father said he wasn't going to be drinking around me at all. He swore he wouldn't drink in the house while I was there, and couldn't wait to have me home.

Liam told him that it would be two years before I should make any real decisions. This was standard guidance for people receiving treatment. Liam felt it was important that he explain this to these people too so they fully understand what the treatment process was. They claim they understood but as you'll see shortly, they didn't or didn’t care.

After the meeting I told Liam I didn't believe a word they had to say. He said I should give it a try. I thought about it, and I thought things might be different—maybe they’d see the efforts I was making, the struggles I’d faced, and how much I wanted to rebuild. Instead, it was as if time had stood still, and I was a child all over again.

One week after I got back, my father brought me to a pub—The Tall Stone in Duleek. The excuse was to bring and wait for his grandson to finish football training. I don’t know if he thought this was some kind of bonding moment, but I knew better. He sat down, ordered himself a pint and a Paddy for the crocodile—his usual—and then, as if to remind me where I stood, he told me I can’t have a drink and ordered me a cappuccino. He made sure the bar staff heard. I believe he thought I was there by choice, not because he required a driver. Normally my sister or her husband would collect their son and bring him training. Suddenly granddad is available, because he has a driver.

Bringing me or anyone in recovery to a pub a week after treatment made as much sense to me as bringing a man fresh from a heart attack to a fast-food restaurant and asking him to sit quietly while you ate.

It wasn’t long before he turned to me and asked, “So what are you doing with the rest of your life?” His tone wasn’t curious or kind—it was a demand, sharp and impatient, like I was already failing for not having an answer. I was one week out of treatment, still trying to get my head straight, and he was already pushing me. I stared into the cappuccino, willing the froth to swallow me whole, and said nothing.

My brother-in-law came in not long after, and I saw my chance. I got up, left my father at the bar, and drove his car over to my sister’s house to wait. I just needed to get out of there—to sit somewhere I didn’t feel small, where his questions and judgment couldn’t reach me.

About an hour later, I went back to the pub to collect him. He was drunk. He climbed into the car, and the moment the door shut, it started. The abuse poured out of him, word after word, like he’d been saving it up all day. I don’t remember the exact words—just the anger in his voice, the disappointment, the bitterness. He didn’t care that I was driving him home, that I was sober and trying. All he saw was something to tear apart.

“What are you doing with your life?” he barked again at some point. Like I was supposed to have figured everything out already, one week after treatment. I gripped the wheel, stared at the road, and said nothing.

By the time we got home, I felt hollowed out. On the motorway, I felt like just stopping the car and getting out. Just walking away. But I didn't have the courage. Less than a week out of treatment, and I was right back where I started—listening to him, carrying him, absorbing the weight of his words.

Nothing had changed.

Except now, I was sober. And could feel every single second of it.

After leaving treatment, I was trying to put my life back together—one step at a time. I bumped into an old school friend working in Donaghmede Shopping Centre one day. We got chatting, and I told him I wasn’t long out of treatment and was looking for somewhere to live. He mentioned a friend of his who rented out rooms and said he could get us together.

Her name was Janet. She had a three-bedroom house in Killary Drive I think it was, Donaghmede, and I rented the front upstairs room. There was another Dub, a taxi driver, in the back bedroom, and a young French girl, maybe about 18, had the box room. I think she was studying here. We all got on fine. The house was quiet, and there was no trouble.

Janet came and went from the house as she pleased, even though she didn’t live there. She brought friends in for tea, complained if there was no milk, and acted as though the house was hers to manage. She constantly criticised small things, and if her cat got out, everyone was expected to help look for it.

My daughter came to stay sometimes. She and the French girl hit it off straight away—like two little sisters, disappearing off together, laughing, and just enjoying themselves. For a while, it felt good. Stable. I was working, staying sober, and minding my own business.

But it didn't last.

Janet started to bring in new rules out of nowhere. One of them was that she could check whether I made my bed before I left for work in the morning—like I was a child in a boarding school. I couldn’t let that slide. I told her I would contact the Tenancy Board for advice. I said if they told me she was allowed to do that, fine. If not, she couldn’t. It wasn’t an argument—I just wanted to know where I stood.

She and the boyfriend then proceeded to explain to me how they weren't registered with the Residential Tenancy Board so the tenancy board rules didn't apply to them, and that I had no rights in the house because I paid rent by the week. What they say goes and that's it. I told them as far as I knew the tenancy board rules were actually in legislation so anyone renting property was bound by them, but I was happy to wait to hear from the tenancy board and I'll talk to them after that.

It turned out that was enough to get me thrown out.

Her boyfriend was retired from CAB—the Criminal Assets Bureau. He had made that very clear to me. When and how he told me, it sounded like a threat.

I don’t know what he said or how he pulled strings, but the following Friday, I came home from work to find two members of the Gardaí waiting for me. They were there to remove me from the house.

One of the Gardaí followed me up to my room and stood there watching as I packed my things. Meanwhile, her boyfriend was shouting up the stairs at me to hurry up. I was trying to stay calm, trying to keep my head down, but inside, I couldn’t believe what was happening. I wasn’t a criminal. I wasn’t causing trouble. I was just trying to live my life.

When I left the house, I went straight to the Garda stations—Coolock and Raheny for certain—to make complaints. I told them what had happened. I explained that I had been a tenant, that I was removed from my home without warning. But no one cared. No one listened.

Not willing to let it drop, I went to the Garda Ombudsman. I thought someone there would take me seriously—that they’d see what happened to me was wrong. But I was wrong. There was no help there either. It was like talking to a wall.

I stepped back out into the world, carrying a bag of my belongings, feeling like I’d been pushed out of the only shelter I had left. It wasn’t just about losing a room in a house—it felt bigger than that.

Like I was wandering through the ruins of a world that didn’t want me. A man caught in his own apocalypse, where the places I thought were safe crumbled around me, and no one seemed to notice.

The next house I moved into was 34 Oakwood Avenue in Swords. It was a four-bedroom house, and I shared it with three other men. When I moved in, the heating system was broken. Winter was coming, and it wasn’t just inconvenient—it was freezing. After several phone calls, not just from me but from the others in the house, the heating system was finally repaired.

That’s when the problems started.

The landlady didn’t pay for the repairs herself. Instead, she added the costs onto the gas meter, the same meter we had to top up to turn on the heating. The agreed arrangement was simple: we’d take turns topping up €20 at a time. It was the same deal for the electricity—€20 on a rotation.

But when you put €20 onto the meter, it didn’t give you €20 worth of heating. The system automatically deducted €12 from every top-up to pay off the landlady’s outstanding bill. That left just €8 credit for us to actually heat the house.

I couldn’t believe it. We were being forced to pay her bills while she sat back and collected rent.

When I confronted her, she brushed it off. She said, “Don’t worry, I’ll return your money when the bill is paid.” I told her straight out—she needed to pay her own bills. I refused to keep topping up the meter under those conditions.

That’s when I took the matter to the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB)—the legitimate authority of the State, or so I thought. A hearing date was set in the offices of the RTB in Dublin. I turned up about half an hour early. When you enter the building you have to be signed in and then a member of security brings you up in the lift to the RTB. It's on the second floor if I recall correctly.

When you step off the elevator you're in a large room with a glass wall. When you walk out that door, in the glass wall, you're in a corridor, and directly across from you is another glass wall and that's the reception area for the tenancy board. That's where I go. At the counter a girl tells me to sit down and I'd be called.

While I'm sitting there I see my landlady and her partner get off the elevator with another gentleman all laughing and joking drinking coffee. I take no more of this and wait to be called. A few minutes later I am called and told what room to go to. But as I walk in, lo and behold who's sitting there with the landlady and her partner, only their friend from the elevator, laughing and joking drinking coffee, our adjudicator. Fancy that. I presented my case. The landlady and her partner presented theirs. I laid it all out: we were paying her bills against our will, and it wasn’t right.

But when he gave his decision, I couldn’t believe my ears. He told me my complaint was childish, a waste of taxpayers’ money, and that I should just pay the bill. As if it didn’t matter that I was being ripped off.

I appealed the decision, still convinced that someone, somewhere would see the injustice in what was happening. Instead, the original ruling was upheld, and I was fined about €500 for daring to stand up for myself.

Let that sink in—I was fined for refusing to pay someone else’s bills.

It wasn’t just a loss. It felt like another piece of the world collapsing around me. I had tried to do the right thing. I turned to the State for help, to the authorities who are supposed to protect tenants like me, and instead, they made me feel like I was the one in the wrong.

Another place that should have been safe turned out to be anything but.