When Niall Harbison answers my FaceTime call on his iPad in Koh Samui, Thailand, the Tyrone man looks fit and healthy. He’s sitting in his apartment with Snoop, his dog he brought with him from Dublin, and to look at him you’d never guess just how far he’s come. Because, just over a year ago, his alcohol addiction put him in the intensive care unit of a Thai hospital for three days. The experience gave him a serious fright, he says, and the shock he needed to quit drinking for good.
n paper, Harbison has lived a life many people would envy. A well-known entrepreneur, in 2012, at the age of 32, he sold Simply Zesty, a web-design agency, before starting LovinDublin. It became the Lovin Media Group, which he exited at 38. He made a significant amount of money in the process — press reports put the figure at around €1m — and then upped sticks and moved to Thailand.
