I came to a realisation, a crossroads, really. I was just riddled with loneliness and guilt. In the end, I was sleeping in a derelict house in my own hometown. I ended up couch-surfing with old buddies, but they got pissed off with me. The drinking just got worse and worse, so I came home, but the drinking got progressively worse. I decided to go to Australia, I thought it would be a fresh start for me and it was the worst year of my life. “Previously I would have tried to stop to get the wife back, but at that point, none of that mattered. “The last few years were the worst,” says Ruffley. His passion for food and his ability in the kitchen perhaps masked his addiction for a long time, but once he retired, he decided to go to Australia for a fresh start, but that period led him down a dark path and eventually to reaching his rock bottom. Ruffley worked as a cook in the Irish military for years. Several times my wife kicked me out of the house, brought through the courts and so on… a lot of my family didn’t want to know me.” It played havoc with my mental health, I was paranoid because I wouldn’t know what was going on. It’s a journey that began at a young age. It also includes his battle against addiction and how he turned it all around through his passion for food. It's a cookbook with recipes and techniques gleaned from Ruffley’s international travels as well as his time in the kitchens of restaurants like three-Michelin-star Maaemo, two-star Hibiscus and Ora in Helsinki. Martin Ruffley’s book, co-authored with Anna King is called 'Rekindling the Fire: Food and the Journey of Life' published by Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd. We need to highlight it and talk about it.”ĭr. He had issues with drink and drugs, and he was a great chef, I’d lost touch with him for a while. The following week after Food on the Edge a good friend of mine hung himself. I’m glad I did it because there are a lot of people who have been through it and they aren’t with us today. “Obviously I talk about it at meetings and that to fellow alcoholics, but to talk about it in a public forum was like a coming out. “It wasn’t easy going up there,” says Ruffley. Martin Ruffley, a chef, teacher and mentor, who has written about his life’s journey and his struggles to overcome alcoholism and addiction in a new cookbook that is quite unlike any other. Last year at Food on the Edge, the gastronomy symposium held at Airfield Estate in Dublin, Ireland, there was one standout speaker among the stellar names in global gastronomy.
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