Though I know people who do, I think you short change yourself. None of us are perfect, none of us can carry all the pain ourselves.

The key for me was the concept of a loving God, as opposed to a punitive one. In sobriety I found that loving God, I'd always known he was there but I didn't trust. And I found out lots about myself. I have sides of myself that I would be embarrassed to reveal, to you or to anybody. It's in our sinning we find humanity.

The awful cliche is a true one , , the whole thing is about self forgiveness.

My life journey has been about celebrating my deficiencies rather than punishing myself for them. I did the latter for a long time.

Alcoholic drinking is all part of that process.

It's hard to be an alcoholic, to live that lifestyle, because at the core you know that it's not working and yet you persist with failure. You need a lot of self will for that. Finding a way of not being that person is really difficult. Being a practising alcoholic is so demeaning, so dispiriting. It kills the spirit. In a way sobriety is about rekindling the spirit.

Finding the fun and the humour and lightness in life again.

My father was a successful drinker. When he had a few jars he had a laugh, sang a song, started a row and then went to bed. When I started going to the pub that's not how it ended up for me. The picture never fitted.

From early on the drinking turned me into somebody I didn't like. I became moody, cantankerous, I could be difficult when I was drunk , , particularly inside the four walls of my own house. I tried to find that thing my father had and I never succeeded. I took other drugs along the way. But funnily enough I always cut them out because they got in the way of my drinking. I stopped smoking dope and taking cocaine.

They say if the drugs are getting in the way of the drugs you have a real problem. I'll be alright if I drink Smithwicks instead of Guinness. If I cut out the whiskeyf I'll be alright if I have brandy instead of port.

Writing and directing, drinking is part of it, late nights after the show, stress, incredibly highs and lows, adrenaline, nerves. Something in my head said: "Give up and see what happens." I first consciously stopped drinking in 1984, by cutting down. But the paradox is the substance controls you even when you're trying to control it. In the last five years of drinking I had strict rules. I never drank before eight in the evening, while I was working. The rules didn't work.

I ended up having a series of panic attacks which floored me. I could be on a train or bus, in the middle of the day, my heart would start pounding, I'd have to get somewhere safe. All those awful feelings took over my life.

On August 15 1989 I had a serious episode in Edinburgh. I knew that was the end of the familiar road and I was off on the one Scott Peck calls less travelled by. I met many people along the way who didn't have the courage to leave drink behind and ended up killing themselves. They were always people who were smart, clever. Their intellect got in the way of their recovery because they thought they could outsmart drink. You can't if it's got you. I have learned more about myself through the process of putting down the drink than through anything else.

When I get interested in something I tend to obsess and that obsession is about trying to stop myself feeling. I can use gambling, I could easily have a problem in that direction if I didn't watch myself.

I've had a huge problem with intimacy all my life. To me intimacy meant that I loved my little brother and he died when he was ten and I was fifteen. I've always a huge problem about getting too close to people or letting people get too close to me.

I was in Austin Texas, when I was thirteen months sober, to direct a play for a theatre run by a friend of mine. A great man of the theatre, an older man than me. I have always made very strong friendships with older men. He was a mentor to me.

Something else good came out of that trip.

I went to a twelve step meeting and heard a man talking about his childhood and his relationship with a woman which his parents broke up. In sobriety he made contact with her to ask forgiveness. The break up of the relationship made him lose more than her, he lost her parents who were better than his own to him. On the way to meet her, in person, he had a crash and ended up in hospital.

She came to see him there.

It was such a story of love, forgiveness and redemption that I went back to the Green Room of the theatre full of my own childhood, full of Frankie, my brother. I was convulsed with pent up grief and loss. I had never forgiven myself for his passing. I realised the drinking had all been about anaesthetising myself against Frankie's passing.

That was the big turning point in my sobriety. I felt so strongly about what I heard I have written about it in the book I am working on. I knew then there was a higher power who forgave me because I could forgive myself. In learning to forgive me I sensed the presence of this awesome being who only thought good of me. I had a huge spiritual awakening in finding a spirit I had lost thirty years earlier. I needed almost to become an alcoholic in order to find this road.

The drinking had been for a reason. It wasn't purposeless. I tell you I just grabbed that knowledge with both hands. I've stayed involved with Twelve Step work ever since.

We're duty bound to pass on the message. I do it to the best of my ability.

That's my Sunday morning. I go to a meeting. I have done for fifteen years. It became my mass in a way. I have done things I am deeply ashamed of. But I have always found my way back. That's the spirit of my life.

CV

Peter Sheridan is an award winning writer, theatre director, playwright, screenwriter, film director and gifted public speaker. He was one of the founder members of Project Arts Centre. He is author of two memoirs, a novel and is currently working on a third memoir which deals with the story of his recovery from addiction. He is sixteen years sober. The prevailing theme across all his works is the triumph of the human spirit.