Bressie for 'tester' of Meath Heritage Cycle

Niall Breslin – known to most at ‘Bressie’ appears to have it made. A judging role on a peak time television show. An award-winning book. A successful band. A model girlfriend. And an enviable level of fitness.
It wasn’t always like this. And it has taken a great deal of work to get this far. Some 20 years ago, when his mother was driving him to Trim, where his first band was based, the then teenager was not in a good place.
Music offered solace to the problems that his anxiety attacks were causing.
“I used to get my mother to drive me from Mullingar to Trim on Saturdays for rehearsals,” the singer recalled last week. “She hated it, because the road from Mullingar to Trim was crap. Now I’m cycling it.”
His first band was called Kaja, made up of some of his friends who were boarders in St Finian’s College in Mullingar, including Cathal Geraghty from Trim and Ryan Martin from Navan.
This summer, Bressie will be back in Trim to take part in the An Post Heritage Cycle, having taken part in the Sligo events in the An Post series for the past two years.
“I wanted to try the Meath one it’s a bit of a tester,” the judge on ‘The Voice of Ireland’ says.
“And it’s closer to home.”
He was taking some time out from the final week of the Voice to launch the event, which takes place in Trim on Saturday and Sunday, 23rd and 24th July.
Cycling and keeping fit is one method, though he stresses not the only method, which has helped him deal with depression and anxiety issues which he has experienced since his early teenage years, when the Mullingar native lived for a period in Israel during his soldier father’s stationing there. Self-harming to such an extent that he broke his arm indicated the extent of his mental health problems at the time, which he covered up, while witnessing widespread bullying at secondary school added to the trauma.
Last year, he detailed his mental health problems in a book, ‘Me and My Mate Jeffrey’ (the name he gave his underlying condition) which won the Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year at last year’s Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards.
In the book, he spoke of how the illness affected his career playing rugby with Leinster, when alcohol and injury dominated and ended his career, and how he lay on the floor of the RTE dressing room having panic attacks before a recording of The Voice.
“Life changes very quickly when you do television,” he said last week.
“It’s a different animal. When you do television, there’s a perception that you’re almost publicly owned. The first year was a shock to the system, but I got used to it then – it was part of the job. It’s a different animal to music, but there are definitely correlations there.”
But it was television which was the catalyst for him to face up to the issues he had been dealing with since he was 15, he says.
“It made me realise I had to change. I couldn’t keep wearing that mask all the time. Television involves a huge element of having to wear a mask. I had enough of it.”
Up to that stage, not many people knew his anxieties had ended so many careers for him, and he wasn’t prepared to let it happen anymore.
“I couldn’t sustain it, and wasn’t prepared to let it happen again – I suppose I was a bit more mature now, a bit more open. I made a call - that’s it.”
He says it’s a call a lot of people in Ireland haven’t made, and they need to.
“It doesn’t go away. You can’t out run it – you have to take the mask off.”
The fact that he also now had a platform that he could highlight such problems also encouraged him.
“When I was 15 I would have loved to have had somebody to be talking about it back then, maybe I wouldn’t have felt so isolated.”
Now he had the audience, the experience and the understanding of the issue.
“I’m very passionate, and I realise that you can do something about it, by investing in people’s minds and mental health, and we don’t do enough of that. The Government is embarrassing – this week, they’ve gone in and raided the mental health budget again. I have had enough of them, and many people have. The time is up and the gloves are off.”
He says mental health problems are the biggest epidemic this government has faced.
“It’s not f*!*ing Irish Water. Look at the issue of homelessness – and all of the social issues – our alcohol culture – they’re all intrinsically linked to mental health. Enough is enough – we have the opportunity to really lobby them and change things.”
For him, the fundamental thing was taking the mask off and talking to people. Then, he looked at things like CBT – cognitative behavioural therapy, and mindfulness.
“I really engaged with them properly. I didn’t just go ‘I hate this’ after one or two days of doing it. I worked and worked and worked on it.”
Exercise was just part of it, as was watching what he ate.
“In the past, if I was feeling uneasy, I be swallowing a handful of Xanex, now I get out and run, even if it’s at two o’clock in the morning. It brings me back. I know how to handle it.”
Cycling has also been a saviour for him, whether it be alone of with friends.
“You can have a meaningful conversation when out on a bike for eight hours,” he says. “Much more so than over eight pints and two packets of crisps. And it might just be about football or something more deeper.
“You can get off a bike and think it was like a counselling session, it was brilliant. And I think more men should do it, and not make everything revolve around alcohol.”
Possessor of an S-Works Pro bike, he says cycling is both exercise and social, and he’s learned more about his friends after being out on a bike with them for two hours, than he knew over 20 years.
“And you don’t have to be out to win a Tour de France or qualifying for the Olympics – just go at whatever pace you want.”
He believes people should take more care of their mental health.
“Most people don’t. They think the mind will be there all the time, they don’t realise they might experience grief or trauma. A lot of people’s answer has been to go to the pub and drink themselves silly.”
Bressie is just out of studio with his band The Blizzards, having recorded three songs, one of which will be released soon. And he’s just bought a recording studio on Camden Street, which he intends to be “the best in the country.”
“I think no matter what, it’s the music that always pulls me back. Even through the rugby time when I was really bad, the music was always there.”
But he’s also trying to stop always thinking about music, and says that musicians, like many creative people, and athletes, are always on overdrive.
“An over active mind will lead to anxiety and low mood, and the same as the body can’t cope with being over active all the time, neither can the mind. People spend so much on diets and gyms in the pursuit of happiness, when really the first place to start is in the brain and the mind, and understanding it.”
He says that a person gets something that they think will make them happy, and find it doesn’t, because their mind doesn’t know what it wants.
“It’s important to have that inner dialogue with your head, so that you understand how it works, and what your values are, for both your mental and physical well being. Everyone you see running or cycling on that road – they’re doing it for a reason, not just to get fit. They know it has an impact. They hop off the bike and feel good about themselves, have more compassion for themselves. Everyone has a story.”