7 Years 104 days - A Deep Sadness7 Years 104 days - A Deep Sadness
I'm Quitting Alcohol
Comedian David Boyle reflects on a visit to his ancestral towns in Ireland, feeling intense sadness about quiet pubs and changing social habits. His thoughts circle around sobriety, culture and what might be lost as traditional drinking spaces fade from everyday life.
14:28•27 Aug 2026
A Deep Sadness: Irish Pubs, Culture, and Seven Years Sober
Episode Overview
- Boyle reflects on visiting Cashel and Clonmel, where he feels a strong ancestral connection yet finds pubs nearly empty.
- He hears from a bartender that young people are choosing the gym over traditional pubs, leaving bars with mostly older clientele.
- Pubs are described as vital spaces for learning stories, social skills and passing culture between generations.
- Boyle wrestles with the tension between recognising alcohol’s harms and mourning the potential loss of pub-based community life.
- He senses a broader societal transition and expresses deep sadness about cultural spaces becoming ghost-like or purely tourist attractions.
“"There has to be a way that you can continue the pub culture and pass it on to the next generation without creating full-blown psychotic alcoholics."”
What remarkable journeys have people faced head-on against addiction? This short, raw episode follows Australian comedian David Boyle as he reflects on a "deep sense of sadness" while travelling through Ireland, the land of his ancestors, seven years into quitting alcohol. Boyle visits Cashel and Clonmel in Tipperary, where he believes the Boyle family originated.
He’s captivated by the beauty of Irish pubs – the wood, the atmosphere, the history – yet what he finds is mostly empty rooms and ageing regulars. A bartender tells him that young people "go to the gym now, they don't drink", and that simple comment hits hard. Through his eyes, you’ll hear a conflicted take on sobriety and culture. On one hand, he knows the damage alcohol can cause.
On the other, he sees pubs as places where "stories are passed on", "you learn how to speak to people", and the torch is handed from older generations to younger ones. He wonders aloud whether letting pubs fade away means letting a core piece of Irish identity fade too. There’s humour, especially in his description of loving pubs "maybe it's in my DNA", and his joke about learning to talk over "a fiddle player and a pedophile".
But the mood is heavy as he compares empty bars to abandoned castles turned into tourist relics. Driving back from Clonmel, he says, "I was almost in tears" at what feels like a wider shift in society. For anyone questioning their relationship with alcohol while also valuing community, tradition and storytelling, this episode offers a brief but intense snapshot of that tension.
It’s less about answers and more about sitting with uncomfortable questions: how do you protect yourself from addiction without losing the places and rituals that shaped you?
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