In an exclusive extract from his new book, Niall Harbison shares details of his troubled adolescence, the depths of his alcoholism and how caring for street dogs pulled him out of a downward spiral
Niall Harbison. Photo: Ryan Dunbar
I was an alcoholic when I first arrived in Thailand. I was in a real mess, but alcoholism doesn’t appear overnight — and there’s rarely any one cause, something I’ve learned from reading many, many books about other addicts over the years.
I’d grown up as an only child in a middle-class, expat suburb of Brussels, where my father had worked for the European Union. My parents had met as teenagers in Northern Ireland. And by the time I was born in 1979, against the backdrop of the Troubles still rumbling on in their warring homeland, Mum and Dad decided a move to Belgium would provide a better life to raise a family.
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