"It takes me about five days to detox. A minute becomes a whole day when you're in bed sweating and waiting for it to pass. You're afraid, if the phone rings, or the door bangs - you would jump sky high.
"It's a horrible addiction. After five days you're feeling much better and able to have a bath or a shower on your own. The shakes are gone, and then it's back to the AA meetings. It helps if you can stay in touch with sober alcoholics.
"There is no cure. I say to myself - `for today, I won't drink' . . . "
These are the words of Brendan O'Brien, former lead singer with the Dixies, recorded in Voices of Cork, the latest book by journalist Vincent Power.
In the book Power has chronicled an era through the voices of many notable people, with the same enthusiasm which he demonstrated in his book on showbands, the evocative Send 'Em Home Sweatin'.
O'Brien told Power: "It could be a lovely June afternoon. You might have 100 quid in your pocket. I could be driving down to East Cork to see some friends.
"I could quite easily pull into the Island Gate and have a pint or two. Then, I could drink socially for two or three days. Next thing, I'd start avoiding people and wouldn't answer the phone. I'd start going to early morning pubs.
"It would go from bad to worse. Eventually, you wouldn't be hiding from anyone and you'd go into any pub for a pint."
And there were the tricks used to get drink after closing time and when most mortals were in bed:
"I'd go to the Imperial Hotel or the Metropole, at three in the morning, and it could be in the middle of winter on a freezing night. I'd make an effort to look a bit respectable. I'd tell the night porter I was on the way back from Dundalk or Drogheda.
"Anyone who has this sort of addiction will tell you that after a few pints, you'd feel grand and could go away again."
The Dixies were stars of the showband era. They reformed in 1982, with Brendan O'Brien again as lead singer, but O'Brien and the band parted company three years later. His drinking had made him too unreliable.
The showband era meant a lot to a generation that had emerged from the late 1940s and 1950s to the hope and promise of the 1960s, with Sean Lemass leading the Celtic Tiger of its day.
To young people then the Irish showbands were slick, glitzy, our own version of the superstars in Britain.
But few realised the darker side to the era, as chronicled by Power in his interview with O'Brien. It is one of the most gripping parts of the book.
The book also includes a chapter on the "The Big Fella", Ben Dunne. In it, Dunne discusses his kidnapping in 1981 and refuses to blame it for what happened subsequently in Florida - the drug abuse, the window ledge, and such.
Charles J. Haughey? "Charlie will be remembered. There's no doubt about that. And if he's remembered, you can't just remember all the bad things," the former supermarket tycoon told Power.
The book also looks at Cork through the eyes of Ted Crosbie of the Examiner, who left his own indelible mark on the southern newspaper; Bill O'Herlihy, who was spawned by the Examiner and who went on to become a national sportscaster; Sonia O'Sullivan - no introduction needed here; Prof John A. Murphy; Billie Morgan; and many others.