This week, Miriam O'Callaghan interviews actor Fionnuala Flanagan and her husband , psychiatrist Dr Garrett O'Connor, Director of the Betty Ford Institute in the United States.
The couple describe how they met in Baltimore, USA in the late 1960s when Fionnuala was on tour in a production of Brian Freil's play Lovers. Garrett was working as a doctor in the city and they met through their mutual friend Eamon Morrissey.
Their relationship was not without its' challenges - Garrett already had two young sons from his first marriage and Fionnuala explains that when she married Garrett, she married a group. The challenges they faced were compounded by Garrett drinking.
Both Fionnuala and Garrett reflected on their early experiences of alcohol.
Garrett had had TB as a 12 year old boy and the cure in those days was a pint of Guinness. The drinking habit he acquired through this medicinal drinking stayed with him through his school days in Clongowes Wood and on to his career and life in America.
Fionnuala recalled growing up in a family where her father drank, though her parents through her father's radical politics and her mother's love of reading were inspirational figures to her.
Both Fionnuala and Garrett are deeply moved by the yearning to belong expressed through their first choice of music, Carrickfergus. They interpret the song in the light of their understanding of alcohol addiction.
Both Fionnuala and Garrett explain the excitement of arriving in the United States in the 1960s and Garrett explains how he became a psychiatrist.
Fionnuala explains how she decided to stop drinking when she realised that she had developed an attitude of secrecy about her drinking that reminded her of how her father used to hide his drinking. Realising that she become like her father, Fionnuala decided to stop drinking. G
arrett explained how he had struggled for a number of years, concealing the impact of his drinking from the rest of the world. Nowadays, they live a life of recovery - and unusually, their marriage has survived the experience of going into recovery.
Garret is delivering the Michael Littleton Memorial Lecture on RTE Radio 1 on St Stephen's Day at 7 pm. The lecture explores the impact of malignant shame on the Irish psyche and how this deep seated shame is the undertow of Irish culture and explains both the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger.