Mark Mehigan has revealed he’s set to release his debut book, titled This Is Not A Self-Help Book, which he’s been secretly working on for months.
The 32-year-old, who reached the milestone of being two years sober in October, shared the news on Instagram and said: “I can’t really believe it’s actually happening.”
Although the book is not intentionally a self-help book, it touches on topics of sobriety, feelings of entrapment and the overall message that things can get better.
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The popular comedian, who announced his engagement to RTÉ star Doireann Garrihy last month, is known for his “daily roasts” on Instagram where he pokes fun at everything from engagements, to first dates and bad friends.
Throughout the laughter, Mark has also been candid about his battles with mental health and his struggle to get sober.
Sharing the news on Instagram, the Dublin native wrote: “It’s been very hard to keep this a secret but the day has finally arrived. My debut book ‘This Is Not a Self Help Book’ is coming out with @gillbooks in March and is now available to preorder.”
“I’ve spent the last year working on it and it’s the most important project of my career to date. It was always a dream of mine to write a book, so I can’t really believe it’s actually happening. Now, obviously I didn’t think it would take becoming an alcoholic in order to do so, but I suppose that’s just the game.”
“I wrote this book in an effort to understand my own head. For too long I thought it was normal to feel trapped in your own life, imprisoned by your behaviours and cornered by your thoughts. This book is for anybody who feels the same but maybe worries that change is not an option,” he continued.
“I spent my twenties telling myself ‘I’m not the type of person who does X’ or ‘I’m not the type of person who does Y’. By writing this book, I wanted to deconstruct the various myths I held about myself; myths that kept me in my lane, kept me drinking, kept me miserable and kept me obsessed with what other people thought of me.
“If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from getting sober, is that it’s never too late to change every aspect of your life. Things can always get better. I hope by reading this, somebody might be convinced of that. I’m talking about internally, though. Not in a business sense. I am not a life coach and there will be no ice baths involved.”
“Over the last 12 months, there were many ups and downs when writing my story. It’s hard revisiting the darker times and looking back on some of the pain I caused myself and others. On many days, doing the roasts together on Instagram provided me with the enormous lift you probably never knew I needed. Thank you for that,” he added.
Mark’s fiancée Doireann showed her support for his new endeavour by commenting “so beyond proud of you” under his post.
The couple have been together for just over a year, and recently moved into the home she bought last October.
Earlier this year, Mark described his past issues with alcohol in an exclusive interview with Goss.ie.
He 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 RTÉ star Doireann Garrihy, his complicated path towards being a comic, and more. Read the full exclusive here.
