Comedian PJ Gallagher gave a powerfully honest interview on Friday night's Late Late Show where he opened up about his family's struggles with alcoholism and how their dynamic spurred him to pursue a different path.
In an appearance on the RTÉ One chatshow in October last year the TV and radio star bravely opened up about his battle with depression, revealing it sent him into a spiral of anxiety that saw him hospitalised.
Speaking to host Patrick Kielty on Friday, Gallagher, who recently welcomed twins Milo and Stevie with his Boston-born partner Kelly Doolin, reflected on the past year and said he's now feeling "really, really good."
"It's been a hell of a year," he said. "The last time I was here I was still wondering if I should tell anyone I was suffering from mental illness, and had come through mental illness.
"I thought I would come onto the Late Late, speak about it and never have to speak about it again.
"Since then the whole world has happened to me. It's a year on Sunday since my mother died. My kids are 10-weeks-old today. I feel good, I'm enjoying my life a lot."
The comedian and actor joked that his daughter is "just like her mother - nothing's a big deal and she gets on with life", while his son is "like me, he is just mental. How you can feed anything that much milk and still be the size of a chicken nugget, I just don't understand it! But he's brilliant, I love them so much."
Gallagher has this week released his book Mad House, in which he explores the trauma of his childhood, the loss of his mother and his mental health struggles. He also writes about how the death of his mother freed him up to be more honest with himself and others.
He is now ready to tell the full truth of his and his family's story.
"For all my talk coming on this show saying 'you should be able to talk about mental illness', I was still hiding the fact that both my parents were really bad alcoholics and I was writing this book and leaving that out," he shared.
"It dawned on me I was talking about mental illness but I was doing the same thing, I was talking about depression and anxiety but I wasn't talking about the alcoholism which is another mental illness, another disease.
Becoming emotional, he continued: "I was still lying, when I was here last year, I was covering it up. For me, when I got sick it was the shame that killed me. I was afraid that anyone would know. I know it sounds crazy but the only thing worse than existing for me was that people would know I was sick."
He added: "When my ma died I wanted to tell her story and then I realised, I'm not being fair to her. She did all these things, but she also did them with her own problems.
"That's a huge part of our family story, and her story. She still managed to pull it off.
"I just wanted to tell the truth, I wanted it to be out there. And how great she was to be able to do it in spite of it all."
The Young Offenders actor also referenced the title of his book, Mad House, which encapsulates his experience of childhood.
"You say to people 'we grew up in a mad house' and they say 'yeah I know, so did I'. No, my ma was part of an Eastern Heath Board experiment at the time where she literally did take in six mental patients into our house, people that had schizophrenia and stuff, and they all lived with us in our house.
"On one side of the house were six people that were really mentally ill, and then there was us as kids, I was probably mentally ill, and my parents who probably were as well. We all lived in a big house together.
"I didn't really realise what normal was. I'd go to other people's homes and they'd be so quiet. And I was like 'what's going on?' Because our house was so crazy. I'd come home some days and there was a man who thought there was a dog in his belly barking in the garden.
"It was a very unusual experience growing up in that home."
Gallagher, who presents a morning show on Nova, also opened up about how his traumatic family background led him to polyamory.
He said: "I came as close to death as a person could come and then I realised 'Why am I so afraid? Why can't I do normal things? Why can't I have a normal family?' The family dynamic was always so terrifying, it felt like a trap to me.
"For me, I believe that the family dynamic that I had was never going to work for me, I needed something else, I needed to have a chosen family. And I believe you can have loving relationships with more than one person, not in a sexual way necessarily, but you can have intimate loving relationships with people.
"I believe I have enough love to give around. That's how I want to move forward."
"I don't want to feel ashamed," he added. "I want to build a new and very different life for myself."
Gallagher, who has been diagnosed with recurrent depressive disorder, knows he will get ill again, but is in a much better place to face it the next time.
"The next time it happens I will be in control, I know what to do," he said. "I know how to deal with it, I know who to go to, I know what medication to take. I know to never be quiet about it.
"It's great to know the next time it comes around again I'm in charge. It took me a long time to get here."
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please see RTÉ's list of helplines.
The Late Late Show, Fridays, RTÉ One and RTÉ Player, 9:35pm
