Cork comedian warns against overworking after 'nervous breakthrough'

Wed, 16 Feb, 2022 - 14:59

Roisin Burke

Cork Comedian Tadhg Hickey has opened up about the struggle of maintaining a healthy work-life balance in the hope of helping others guard their mental health.

Mr Hickey, who is well known for his online sketches in particualr, said he found himself in bed, unable to sleep or eat after working 16 hour days in the run-up to Christmas.

“I was going to lie to you and say I had a cool new project and I didn’t have time to be online, but I thought I would be more useful to some people if I told the truth and the truth is I have had a bit of a breakdown, to be honest," he said in a post on Twitter.

"There is no shame in it.”

Tadhg, who is an alcoholic and has been sober for over six years, said these types of incidents were something that were commonplace during his years of drinking and taking drugs, but this was his first issue in sobriety.

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“I used to have them when I was drinking and drugging the whole time and the final one back in the day about six or seven years ago was a realisation if I didn’t stop drinking and taking drugs I was going to die. So I stopped and turned my life around and rather than look at it as a breakdown really, this is the way I would look at it, it’s a bit of a breakthrough.”

Mr Hickey said the issue was caused due to overwork and not looking after himself holistically.

“Before Christmas, I was working 16 hour days, I wasn’t seeing any friends, I thought to myself do I need friends anymore? Cause in my mind, I’m a mystic, I meditate and I help young addicts, I thought I was above ill health.

“I thought 16 hour days, grand, hospitalised with kidney stones, grand, plough on with it, don’t meditate, don’t exercise, don’t see your friends, don’t reach out to anyone and you’ll be grand. Not the case, ended up in bed, couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, mental like”

Mr Hickey acknowledged that experiences vary but for him, an episode like this is usually a signal that he is doing something wrong.

“Alcoholism is a mental illness, a lot of people who aren’t addicts don’t realise that. It’s actually a mental illness guys. And you turn your life around and it's unreal, but it’s not a case that you put down the bottle and things are grand. You need to keep doing the things that keep you mentally healthy and I wasn’t doing them. My addiction came in the back door, I got addicted to working, I got addicted to Twitter, as cringey as it to say, got addicted to people telling me I was a great lad on Twitter and I got addicted to pseudo-intellectual Wikipedia-fuelled spats with people calling me a Marxist, terrorist-supporting scumbag. That’s the honest truth."

Tadhg said he hoped sharing his story would help others to look after themselves adequately and ensure they too did not end up in a similar situation.

“I hope self-employed people get something out of this, You know push push push, there is not much work out there, you gotta keep going, then you get obsessed and you block out the things that matter in life and the things that got me out of this hole, which is exercise, love, compassion, reaching out to people, the amount of help I got was actually unreal and meditation and that’s it, because what’s the point of being busy if you have no peace of mind.”