Doireann Garrihy’s comedian boyfriend Mark Mehigan has marked two years of sobriety in a post shared on social media.
The Dublin native, who has opened up about his struggle with alcoholism in the past, has been dating the RTÉ presenter for almost a year.
Taking to Instagram, Mark shared a photo of himself alongside the caption: “Two years sober today. One day at a time.”
“Everything changed the moment that I asked for help. Thank you all for being a part of this weird and wonderful journey with me,” he added.
In the comment section, Doireann showed her support by commenting a series of heart emojis.
Her mother Clare Garrihy also wrote under the post: “Just keep driving on.😘❤️.”
Doireann also re-posted Mark’s photo on her Instagram Stories, before sharing a sweet photo of them together.
She captioned the post: “Proud of you today and every day ❤️.”
Doireann and Mark are currently preparing to move into her new home in Castleknock, which she purchased last October.
During an exclusive interview with Goss.ie earlier this year, Mark publicly opened up about his recovery for the first time.
The comedian told us: “I’m an alcoholic and I’m very, very, very grateful for every day that I’m sober.”
“If you are struggling, just please ask for help, because everything can change. Like I thought getting better was for other people, like I thought getting sober was something that other people did, and that I was uniquely f***ed.”
“But that hasn’t been the case, and yeah it’s one day at a time, its a 24 hour way of living and if I go to bed sober tonight it will be a good day.”
The podcaster continued: “I try to choose my words carefully because I’m very nervous when talking about recovery, as you can probably tell, because my life has been saved by other people in addiction, literally, and all I can do is speak for myself and my own experiences.”
“Everybody’s journey of addiction and everybody’s journey of recovery is totally different, so I’m by no means a spokesperson for addiction or for alcoholism.”
“But I do think it’s interesting that this idea of an alcoholic being on a park bench, like a park bench can be anything, and I had f***ing several.
“I had several different park benches, the reality is the only thing that was separating me from the literal park bench was privilege.”
In our exclusive interview with Mark, he also spoke about his relationship with Doireann, who he described as the “greatest person” he’s ever met.
Speaking about the public reaction to their relationship, Mark admitted: “It has been really overwhelming at times because I don’t think I understood the magnitude of how successful she is, but at the same time it’s absolutely incredible when you see the affect that she has on people.”
“I mean walking around, and especially after Dancing with the Stars, seeing children’s eyes light up [when they see her] is just so sweet, and kids getting their mum’s to come over and say hi.”
“And I suppose just the complete wide range of people that tune in to Doireann on the breakfast show and then Dancing with the Stars and then most recently when she did the Bord Gais Theatre two nights in a row.”
“I mean that was… again like Joanne McNally, seeing Doireann and feeling that energy in the room you realise that you’re witnessing something extremely special.”
Mark continued: “I’ll be honest the attention at times has been hard, because you get all the articles going out and then there will be a comment going ‘Comedian? I’ve never heard of him!’ As if f***ing Dermot Moriarty, the 72-year-old fisherman from Carlow, is supposed to have his f***ing finger on the cultural pulse of Dublin like.”
“I think I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t very daunting at times, and you know because of the type of person that I am, my instinct can be to flee these scenarios.”
“But yeah at the end of the day none of that interferes with just how good things are with Doireann, and she is easily the greatest person that I’ve ever met.”
The podcaster, who has been sober since October 2021, added: “I texted one of my friends after our first date, and I was around 13 months sober, and I texted one of my friends and was like ‘that’s the first time in the last 13 months that I haven’t felt like an alcoholic’.”
“I don’t really like the phrase ‘when you know, you know’ because this is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before in my life, and Doireann is like nobody I’ve ever met before in my life.
“But there’s sides of myself that I’m showing her that I wasn’t even aware that I had.”
