Fear and Loathing in Dublin

A moving memoir from Irish playwright Aodhan Madden, tracing his life from an alcoholic journalist battling his sexuality in 1970’s Dublin through to his attempts at recovery and advancing his writing career. Unforgiving and honest, Fear and Loathing in Dublin is a deft infusion of humor and madness, chronicling the shades of darkness and light within Aodhan Madden’s colorful life.

One of the few people to have ever attempted escape into a mental institution, Madden sought a means of recovery in everything from the bottle to therapy. The people Madden encountered in the many pubs he frequented and, like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, those in Dean Swift’s hospital are all portrayed as an amusing cast of characters (including a drag queen and a murderer) with heartbreaking frailties, depth and resilience. Tales of debauchery from Ireland’s leading newspaper journalists forge a link between writing and drinking. Madden’s dependence on alcohol was compounded by the loss of his mother and, whilst also confronting his sexuality and the ignorance of others towards “filthy queers”, he suffered from severe paranoid delusions, resulting in repeated suicide attempts.

Madden’s quest for sobriety is finally aided by his emerging career as a playwright and the success of his first play, The Midnight Door. This is a cathartic tale of recovery despite personal demons, of salvation found in the love of the written word, and of a loving father who stood by a troubled son. It’s also a mark of how far we’ve come towards understanding madness and fostering a more inclusive, humane society and, of course, of how far we have yet to go.