Tim MacGabhann on Addiction, Recovery, and His Memoir 'The Black Pool'

The Core of Addiction

• 💡 MacGabhann aimed to capture the desperate, driven voice at the core of addiction, describing it as an attachment to a solution outside oneself.
• 🧠 He found resonance in the spiraling, bottomless voice of Samuel Beckett's 'The Unnamable', which he felt summarized the experience of being totally attached to substances.

The Onset of Addiction

• ⚠️ MacGabhann describes feeling born with a layer of skin missing, making him more sensitive to external stimuli, leading him to feel dangerously safe upon his first drink at age 17.
• 🥃 College was a blur, and the economic crash in Ireland led him to choose a mixture of drink and despair, propelling him across three continents.

Journalism and Writing Transitions

• 📰 MacGabhann transitioned from journalism, investigating organized crime and the nexus of business, politics, and crime, to writing thrillers.
• ✍️ His memoir, 'The Black Pool,' was developed with editors who encouraged him to strip away artifice and tell his story directly and honestly.
• 🎙️ He describes an intense writing process, waking early to