As I read the Last Rites to a young man dying of alcohol addiction, he looked at me and I sensed in him a flicker of recognition and empathy, as if to say, ‘we’re not so different, really’.
Our lives might have seemed poles apart – he was on a hospital bed with little time left, I was a middle-aged priest and outwardly respectable member of our Cheshire community, opening fetes and ministering at weddings and funerals – but I think he knew. He saw in my eyes what he’d seen in his own when he looked in the mirror – the pain, the misery, the self-loathing.
Because I too was an alcoholic, and our encounter that day was another warning of the direction in which my life was headed, a trajectory that started when I was a small boy, ashamed of my sexuality, and escalated as I sought escape in the Catholic Church.
In my three decades as a priest I sat with my parishioners when they were sick, when they were dying, when they needed me. I gave them everything. But I gave myself very little. Instead, I drank to dull the disconnect between myself and the world I inhabited until, aged 53, I was downing three bottles of wine a day, my hands shaking as I gave Mass, convinced the only way out was suicide.
I was rescued by colleagues – and, I believe, God – and sent to rehab, where I started my recovery. Almost three years on, having left the priesthood and trained to be a counsellor, I am happy and grateful to be alive.
I was raised in a loving family in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, the eldest of three brothers. Our dad was a detective in the special branch of the Irish police and Mum, a housewife. But the culture of Catholic Ireland in the 1970s made it clear it was not acceptable to be gay – which I instinctively realised I was from the age of seven.
Convinced I was going to hell, I’d pray to God every night to take my homosexuality away, and kept it a secret from family and friends. But my penchant for Dynasty plot lines and willingness to take the female leads in the school play, and habit of when I started trying on Mum’s make-up, quickly marked me as different.
Spat on, punched and called a ‘faggot’, I grew too scared of being beaten up to walk home through town. I took a back route via the fields, grabbing dock leaves to remove the mud from my shoes so my parents didn’t notice.
Jerome’s early joy and sense of community from the church obscured the shame of being gay and, by the time he’d been ordained, he realised alcohol could also help
My schoolwork suffered and at 18, without the academic grades to go to university, I decided the best way to get away from my bullies and make a difference in the world was to become a priest. Of course, I now realise the irony – that the Roman Catholic church is not the best place for a gay man to run to.
Yet being attracted to the same sex is not overtly frowned upon by the institution – only the sexual act is deemed sinful. I was honest about my sexuality with those at St Peter’s College in Wexford, where I studied for seven years. I think they admired my honesty, and their advice was to nurture my vow of celibacy.
I continued to believe my homosexuality was evil and must be repressed, however, so, as part of my training I asked my counsellor for hypnosis to remove it. She said I needed to accept who I was without shame.
The early joy and sense of community I felt from entering the church obscured the gnawing shame of being gay and, by the time I’d been ordained, moved to England and become secretary to the Bishop of Shrewsbury, aged 27, I realised alcohol could also help.
I’d only ever been a social drinker, but living alone for the first time, I discovered wine both switched off my low self-esteem and helped me unwind. I found comfort in drinking at home and one glass soon became two.
By my 30s I was getting through a bottle a night, and although I felt embarrassment lest my presbytery neighbours hear the clang of the empty bottles in the recycling bin, I never had hangovers or anxiety the next day. My duties weren’t affected. I could seemingly drink as much as I wanted – and often did.
In 2003 I was made priest at Our Lady and St Joseph’s in Wallasey, Merseyside, in charge of confessions, weddings and funerals and assigned hospital chaplaincy.
As my responsibilities increased so did my alcohol intake. The work was rewarding but demanding – I was dealing with people at their most vulnerable and intent on giving them my full attention. In the absence of anyone to help relieve the maelstrom of emotion at the end of a long stressful day, wine was both my coping mechanism and companion.
The Delamere Addiction Rehabilitation Centre, Cheshire, where former patient Jerome now has a very different role
Meanwhile, the longer I kept my sexuality secret, the more the internal dilemma of being gay festered. I’m sure most locals suspected, but if anyone asked outright I would deny it or deflect the question.
Among those outside the church, I was less discreet and, at 37, I fell in love with a man I met in a bar. Euphoria at my first relationship swept away the guilt at my transgression. I thought he was in love with me too, but after three months I discovered he was married to another man.
Lost and devastated, I finally admitted to my parents I was gay. They were fully supportive, as was my bishop when I confessed to the relationship with the intention of resigning. Ultimately, however, I was a coward – I didn’t think I was qualified to do anything but be a priest, so remained in the church.
Just as my homosexuality appeared an open secret, so too was my predilection for drink, if not the extent to which I relied on alcohol. The supermarket was up the road from the church in Crewe. Parishioners noticed I was popping in and out with nothing but wine most evenings. ‘People know how much you’re drinking,’ one said when she saw me with six bottles in my basket one day. Ashamed, I started going to the supermarket in the neighbouring town to avoid them.
By my 40s, I was drinking a bottle and a half of wine most weekdays, if not two; more during my time off on Sunday afternoons and Mondays. There was no pretence about my priesthood – I remained devoted to my job and parishioners. But I realised my drinking was getting out of hand when I noticed my hands shaking while giving Mass one morning. Rather than try and stop, which felt impossible, I found a way around it – a glass of wine drunk first thing, I learned, would keep the tremors at bay.
Socially, I was never without a drink. Even with wine in front of me I was ordering more, and friends smelt it on my breath over brunch the next morning. ‘You’re going to kill yourself,’ my best friend warned.
At night, I tried to sleep with the light on to stop myself suffering hallucinations. I looked bloated: my eyes were drawn, my skin dry, my body in constant pain around my liver. My GP was so worried that, when I was 46, he warned that if I didn’t show him I could stop drinking, he would report me to the police – he feared I was a danger on the roads.
To keep him quiet I managed to quit for four months. After accepting his congratulations at proving my sobriety, I went straight from the surgery to buy wine.
Drinking was my twisted form of revenge at what I had construed as a threat on his part, as much as it was subconscious self-harm and by my 50s I was drinking three bottles a day. When I wasn’t drinking I was thinking about my next drink and alone in the church, I’d bang on the altar, in physical and mental turmoil, begging God to help me.
In 2022 I drank through Lent, when Catholics are supposed to abstain, and one Saturday in April, with nine baptisms to conduct ahead of me that morning, my body felt it was shutting down. My morning glass of wine no longer stopped the shakes. I couldn’t eat or sleep.
Somehow I got through those baptisms but the following week, I decided my pain was never going to end: the only way out was to kill myself. I had a kitchen knife ready.
Yet as I fell to my knees lamenting my life before I planned to take it, something happened that is hard to explain; a spiritual intervention, I believe, that told me it was OK to seek help.
So, for the first time in my life, I did. I called my secretary and told her I couldn’t go on.
Before I knew it she and her husband were sitting in front of me, my decades of secret drinking – the shame, the lies – spilling out with my tears. They looked at me with nothing but kindness.
‘Father, we know,’ they said. ‘Everybody has been worried about you. We will look after you.’
Relief washed over me. I was overwhelmed at what the future held as I poured the last of my wine down the sink, but curiously devoid of fear.
The church financed my four-week stay at Delamere, a rehab centre in the nearby village of Cuddington, where I shook so much I had to eat my dinner with a spoon as the alcohol left my body. ‘Don’t worry,’ said my fellow rehab guests, sensing my self-consciousness. ‘A lot of us shake too.’
I was with men and women from different walks of life, but in terms of addiction borne of low self-esteem and a need to hide our true selves, our stories were not dissimilar.
In therapy I learned how to discuss my sexuality without shame for the first time. I realised I’d been drinking from a position of anger – and that neither my addiction, nor my homosexuality, made me inherently flawed.
Once the shame that had driven my desire to drink was out in the open, and the root of my addiction acknowledged, there was no need for alcohol.
I knew returning to the presbytery would trigger too many memories so the church provided me with a property where I could have the space to consider what I wanted to do after rehab.
I joined Alcoholics Anonymous, attending eight meetings a week. The stories of recovery I heard reminded me I wasn’t alone. I started volunteering for a hospice charity and signed up for a counselling diploma so I could help others.
A small part of me still wondered if I should remain in the priesthood. But when I was asked to deliver Mass a month later I grew anxious. I realised the trauma of shaking at the altar was too recent to return to church at all, let alone minister, and so I resigned.
I still have my religious faith and I will serve the church as best I can, but I no longer live a life I was never meant to lead.
Although dating was now an option, the anti-depressants I was put on killed my libido. In any case, I was still getting to know myself. I’d never say never to a relationship, but it’s not a priority at present.
Last February I returned to Delamere to work as a recovery mentor. When a guest arrives, shaking and scared, I can tell them I’ve got a pretty good idea what they’re going through; that life won’t be easy at first, but if they put in the work, sobriety will become second nature.
In December I moved into my own house in Northwich, Cheshire, paying my own bills for the first time in my life, working normal hours and enjoying being part of a community outside the church. The legacy of my past surrounds me, from the wine in supermarket aisles to the kitchen knives I still can’t allow to sit in the draining tray in my kitchen because they remind me of how close I came to taking my own life.
But recently, I risked switching the landing light off before I went to bed for the first time in years and, instead of fearing hallucinations, I fell into a deep, restful sleep. After decades of despair and addiction, I am finally free.
As told to Antonia Hoyle