Season 2 Episode 4 joseph kearney
In this episode Evy has sits down with Joseph Kearney, a writer, storyteller and social media officer at Romeo. Joseph openly shares about his journey from Ireland to Amsterdam, love, family and addiction. |
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Episode Transcript:
Evy: This was very stressful. I don't appreciate all the stressful work Webster does.
Joseph: But I was also the weirdo in Ireland for not swearing, and people think that you are super posh or full of yourself.
Evy: Oh really?
Joseph: Yeah. But then we do say shite and feck, which we don't consider to be swear words. And people outside of Ireland think the feck is fuck but it's not. And they think that shite is shit but it's not.
Evy: Hello, and welcome to "Word Up Podcast." I'm Evy. And Webster is not here with us today, but I'm with our lovely guest, Joseph.
Joseph: Hello.
Evy: Hi, how are you today?
Joseph: I'm very well, how are you?
Evy: I'm very excited to have you here.
Joseph: Good. Yes, it's been a long time planning. We finally made it, yes.
Evy: Yeah. And we are here in your lovely office overlooking an amazing Amsterdam panorama.
Joseph: We do have a really beautiful view. What a pity we're on the radio. We're just next to Central Station, very central location indeed. Yeah.
Evy: And you are, I heard, social media wizard here.
Joseph: That's what they called me. Yes, the social media wizard, the social media storyteller. These are the things that I do. Yes.
Evy: And how did you get to be here?
Joseph: How did I come to this job, or to this country, or to this place?
Evy: Yeah, both. Everything.
Joseph: How did I get to be here?
Evy: Yeah.
Joseph: Well, once upon a time, a man called Joseph went to a beauty pageant called The Rose of Tralee Festival in County Kerry in Ireland. And there, he met a woman called Guinan. And he really liked her, and she really liked him. And they continued to see each other until the point that he asked her to marry him. And so, because they met at The Rose of Tralee Festival, the flowers for the wedding were roses. So, I am here because of a beauty pageant. Because of The Rose of Tralee Festival, Joseph and Guinan are my parents. And when I learned this wonderful story of union, I got a tattoo of a rose on my ankle.
And I know tattoo roses are the tackiest of all tattoos, and I love my rose tattoo so much. So, that's how they made me, I suppose. I'm one of three boys. But then I grew up in the Southwest of Ireland, and I loved talking, as many Irish people do. And my dad is an amazing storyteller. And my whole childhood was spent listening to him tell stories as he would be driving back from work and we might be with him in the lorry or in the car. He did many different jobs, and we listened to many different stories. And I suppose I learned the tradition of storytelling from my dad, just by listening.
And then I went to university, and I studied drama and performance arts. And then I did a master's in drama therapy, and I did a second masters in journalism. So, I'm very blessed and very lucky. And all along the way, in Ireland, in my culture, I was very exposed to theatre, and to drama, and to beauty. And we really celebrate the spoken word in Ireland, and we really celebrate poetry and drama. And part of our country is based on this tradition of storytelling. We have a National Theatre, the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. I worked there in ticket sales and as a tour guide when they were launching their tour guide program. So, I got to bring people through the National Theatre and onto the stage and tell stories about ghosts and the formation of our nation. So, that was lovely.
But all along the way, my brother was very fascinated with a particular green plant that is very illegal in Ireland. And so, his journey brought him to the Netherlands. And when I was in Dublin living my journey and my story, I was missing my brother and our closeness. And I was always saying to him, "One day, I'll come to the Netherlands if that's okay with you." And he was always saying, "Please come, please come."
And in 2009, I said, "Dara, I'm going to move over. I'm going to come live with you in the Netherlands. I'm going to quit my job here in Ireland, and we're going to see what happens." And he said, "Okay." And he asked around to get me a job, and he asked around to find me a place to live. And just three months before I left Ireland, I met this wonderful man, who I wonder if I can name him. I'm going to give him a pseudonym, just in case he's uncomfortable being included in the story. Let's call him Patrick because he's Irish.
Evy: Of course.
Joseph: And Patrick asked me not to move to the Netherlands. And Patrick loved me, and I loved Patrick. So, I said, "Okay, do you know what? I won't." And I rang up my brother, and I broke his heart. But I quit my job, and I quit my lease. And suddenly, I changed my plan. And so, I moved in with Patrick and his parents in his house in Dublin for the rest of the summer, and then I ended up staying in Ireland for five more years, always in the back of my head thinking, "I really should have gone to the Netherlands." And now I can't really go because I can't, you know, stir that up with my brother again. And things didn't work out with me and Patrick and life went on. And then I contacted my brother again and said, "Look, maybe I will come to the Netherlands this time. Do you trust me?" And he's like, "Of course, come, no problem."
So, I came over for the summer, and I'd saved up some money. And I had an amazing summer. And I didn't work at all, for the first time in my life. And I just partied and got distracted by the distractions of the Netherlands. And then I made some friends, and I joined a rugby team. And then my money was running out, and I was looking for work. And I thought, "Well, I'm very hireable." I mean, I'm lovely and, you know, I'm very likable and award-winning, and nobody was hiring me. It was like recession, and there was a gap in my CV. And I just moved here to party for months, so why would anyone hire me? So, I panicked, and I started going into cafes, and restaurants, and hotels, and Starbucks just here next to Central Station hired me.
So, at 33 years of age, I started serving coffee in Starbucks, and my manager was 19 years old. And it was amazing. I loved working in Starbucks because it reminded me of a time that I worked in the Hard Rock Cafe in Dublin, and this American, globalization, standardization of service that is sweet, and kind, and people are really passionate about their coffee. And all these young kids that I was working with were breathing youth into me. And after six months, I was like, "Am I going to stay in Starbucks for the rest of my life? Is this my career now? Or am I going to try and get back into journalism, and storytelling, and the things I'd done in Ireland?"
So, I started applying for jobs around the city. And another shop was going to hire me in a, sort of, marketing, communications role, but within the sex industry. And I thought, "That's really exciting." And so, I told Starbucks that I was leaving. I was gonna go work for this company and be part of their team. And I was really impressed by their commitment to, like, sexual expression, and gay beauty, and pride, and so on.
And then, in a heartbeat, the job they offered me was gone. And I don't know how it disappeared, but I already told Starbucks that I was leaving. And much like my leaving in Ireland in a speed bump, it was like like history repeating. And so, I was too proud to tell Starbucks that this job opportunity had disappeared. And so, I just carried on into the west and found a job somewhere else in Amsterdam, and I worked in a sauna for a year. And then the sauna was enough for me. I made lovely friends there, I had a nice time, and I thought to myself, "I need to get out of services industry."
So, I started looking for work again. And there's this dating app called Romeo, and they advertise their jobs through the dating app. And on the very day that I wanted a new job, they advertised social media officer. And I looked at the qualifications that they needed, and they suited everything I'd ever done in Ireland, and it really fitted who I was before I moved to the Netherlands. But nothing I'd done in the Netherlands would be suitable experience for this role. So, I thought, "Well, I'll just apply for it anyway." And it was the first time in a long time I'd applied for a grownup job. It was the first time in a long time I had to create a CV and write about projects and critically assess myself and analyze my skills.
And so, I did all of those. And I signed up for this website, and I built a CV on it, and I took out a year membership because I thought I'm gonna be looking for a grownup job for a year. And the first job I applied for was the social media officer at Romeo. And they did a Skype interview. I had to submit written work. There was a panel. There was a process selection. Then it was whittled down to, like, five candidates or three candidates, and I was brought in here for a face-to-face interview. And then I had to go back to work in the sauna and wait for the decision. And ultimately, they picked me, and they called me, and they offered me the job, and it was wonderful. And so, even though I joined the job recruitment agency for a year, I got the very first job I applied for.
Evy: It's amazing.
Joseph: Yeah, it's wonderful. But also, you know, in my brain, "Well, I paid for a year subscription, and I didn't get my..." Anyway, I got the job, and that is how I'm here in the sit before you today.
Evy: Oh, fantastic. What a story. I'm just, like, smiling. I'm, like, listening...
Joseph: Oh, there's so much more. Like, I edited it down. I know I can talk for hours. I kept it short.
Evy: It's lovely. But I'm wondering, what's the most exciting part about being social media wizard?
Joseph: Oh, yeah, so let's get deep into that. So, I was hired here three years ago, and I was replacing someone who was really good at his job. And he had set a really great standard for the voice of the company, and social media interaction, and storytelling, and content for the blog. And so, I stepped into these shoes that were still fairly warm from the person before me, and I was thinking, "Do I just try to repeat everything that happened before, or do we move in a new direction?" And so, what we started doing was checking on queer culture and reading what was available online and thinking, "How does that sit with our brand values, or how does that help Romeo to tell its story?"
And so, for a while, it was really wonderful. We could write about queer culture and sexual identity. Or also, I'm very interested in the leather scene, or I'm very curious about kink, and so I wrote an awful lot of kink articles. And for a golden year, we just wrote about whatever we wanted to write about, as long as we felt it fitted the values of Romeo. And then we communicate those stories on Twitter, on Instagram. We had Snapchat for a while, on YouTube. So, it was really fun. It was really like a no holds barred, unlimited creativity space.
Evy: Fantastic.
Joseph: Yeah, it was ideal. It was ideal. And then marketing, alongside social media, was doing global campaigns and advertising. There was a moment where we realized that social media wasn't fully supporting the global marketing campaign, so we needed to bring those stories closer together. And so, we needed to work closer together. But then marketing completely changed direction at some point in this. But there was a moment where I was sent to The Gay Games in Paris to follow a water polo team and to report on what they were doing, which was phenomenal.
There was a week where I was sent to European Gay Ski Week to go skiing, and to put it on Instagram. So, you know, there was some really fine luxury glamour jobs during that process of development and figuring out who we are and how we fit. And now, we've moved it more to be our social media and our storytelling online needs to be reflective of where our company is going and what our company is doing. Not so much what wonderful people are doing skiing in the middle of friends, or not so much how this huge gay sporting event might be going on in Tokyo or Paris. More sort of what are we doing to provide an excellent service, or what are we doing to make our platform accessible and safe? So, it's less about looking out, and it's more about communicating our story out to our audience.
Evy: Okay. I would imagine always, it's a lot of storytelling, but it's also very much process-oriented work, right?
Joseph: Yeah, we've moved. We've moved from queer culture storytelling, which is wonderful, to really focusing on our brand and focusing on the service that we provide. But I suppose if we talk about our core values as a dating app, you know, we believe in inclusion, and tolerance, acceptance, love, and we want men to feel that they have the freedom to explore their sexuality online and to express it. And so, if that, for you, is putting up a photo of you in a fishing boat, then that's your expression, go ahead and do it. And if that, for you, is a topless photo, which an awful lot of guys tend to like doing, then fine, that's for you, too.
But we don't want to limit ourselves to only being a, sort of, app or website where it's lots of topless photos and lots of guys looking for sex, which is great. Please come to Romeo and look for sex, but we also want it to be maybe you're looking for friendship, maybe you're traveling and you don't know anybody in Argentina. And you can go on to Romeo and find a local. And because Romeo is such a lovely, friendly online community, hopefully, the Romeo that you meet there in Argentina will also be as lovely and kind as our app is. And then, in Germany, we're really very popular, and a lot of people use Romeo there for, how do I describe it, social networking, almost to a professional level. Like, you might almost find a job through a friend on Romeo.
Evy: Wow. And as a social media expert, I'm really curious about how do you deal with your online personality and the reality of the personalities? Like, how do you deal with, when people try to maybe look better or have more filters on pictures?
Joseph: Oh, we just wrote some articles about this recently. But before we dive into that, I suppose, I never feel like I'm a social media expert, I suppose.
Evy: Okay, sorry.
Joseph: No, it's okay. Sorry. It's the first time we're talking about it. I suppose anybody that would use the... I shouldn't judge others but myself. Using the word experts suddenly closes a lot of doors to creativity, and learning, and growth. So, I suppose someone who's familiar with a bit of social media or who's interested or has a passion for it, but I always feel like I'm a student, and I always feel like I'm growing. And I remember I went to this amazing presentation by "Vice News" here in the Netherlands on Brand Beyond, where they were talking about their new way of investigating news.
And they put the story at the middle, and then they draw a circle around it, and they decide, "Will this end up on Twitter? Is this going on Snapchat? Is this going on Facebook?" And the experience map, the direction their new story is going to go in. And that means on the day that they go to cover the story, they already have this structure in place. And that, to me, was mind-blowing. And it might sound very simple, but...
So, when we set about a story, when we set about creating something, we already know where we're going to place it or where we're not going to place it, and that helps me to speak to design about our needs from them and our demands on them. Then they can evaluate how much time they have to devote to the story and how they can work in and around their agenda. So, it's all very organic. But back to people's perfect personas versus their real life, yeah, let's just jump straight into the toxic nature of social media, you know, the elephant in the room, and the toxic nature of excessive online activity in any sense, even in dating.
So, Instagram exists, and people love us. And you go on there and you take your best holiday photo. And you might have spent three days in, let's say, Vienna. And instead of enjoying Vienna and eating the food, and drinking the coffee, and talking to the locals, you're just checking out, "Where's my best Instagram location?" And you get a beautiful door, and you think, "Oh, this is gonna be gorgeous behind me in my selfie of my face in Vienna." And you've got it, and you put that up in line, but then you need to get another one, and another one, and another one. And so, you're not really on holidays in Vienna, and you're just at a photo shoot that happens to be in Austria.
Evy: Essentially, yeah.
Joseph: And a lot of people fall victim to that. And I myself have fallen victim to that so many times. And it's the way it's constructed and the way that social media works is that sometimes we can become removed from reality. And even though something was created to help you make connections and to find intimacy, removes it from you, and it's a bit of a paradox. So, I feel like engaging with that toxicity, you need to be careful at how much time you spend online, and you need to be careful with how you see yourself.
You should see yourself for real, which is very hard to do, and not see yourself as that person in the doorway in Vienna that got 6,000 likes. And so then, you look at your photo, and you put a filter on there, and the filter makes your skin better, or takes away the spots that you have, or hides your freckles. Or you can then doctor it to, like, fine details, that your hair can be nicer in your version. And I suppose that can be fun for a while, but then it can grow, and it can get out of control.
And not to pick just on Instagram. I mean, it's on Snapchat. It's just how we work in the world right now with photographs online and filters. So, one thing is to limit your time online. Another thing is just to do stuff that is in reality with people, like go for a run, go for a jog, jog with a friend, go for a swim, go to the gym. I look every week at how many hours I spend on my phone because my phone tells me, and I'm always competing with myself to get it down, and get it down, and get it less, and get it less.
But at the same time, I want to use these devices for the gifts that they bring, and the access to knowledge, and the access to information. I feel as long as it's fun and you're playing with it, and it's playful, it's good. But when the moment comes that you need to check these things, and you have to do these things before you go to bed, or first thing in the morning, or when you're out for lunch with a friend and you're not thinking about lunch and the friend, you're thinking about taking a photo of the lunch with your friend, I think this is where we're crossing boundaries.
Evy: Yeah. It's hard, isn't it, though?
Joseph: It's a tough one.
Evy: Yeah. Because it's always like... I mean, you know, we also do that in real life, you know, surgery, any way to better yourself, but there's also limit there also, the same way as it is for social media.
Joseph: Yeah. Well, a friend told me the story recently. Now, I haven't checked if it's true myself, so just validate.
Evy: Okay. Disclaimer. Yeah.
Joseph: This is a story I heard from a friend. Steve Jobs, God rest him, did not let his own children have an iPad, right, because they are so addictive. For the benefit of their mental health, he wouldn't let them have a product that his company was making. So, these things are addictive, and they're designed to make you depend on them.
And I think Androids are less addictive and better for your health, even though people enjoy using them less. So, to be careful with your own mental health, to be careful what your own propensity to addiction, like all human beings could potentially develop an unhealthy habit. I know I have myself, many times, and social media and digital devices are just part of that.
Evy: Yeah, of course. So, speaking about addiction, are there any other dangerous things in life that challenge you?
Joseph: Oh, my God, I have so many stories to tell you about addiction. I suppose we should start with... We were just mentioning there a moment ago, my father and how wonderful he is. I love my dad. My dad's amazing, and he's just done so many great... I'm so blessed and lucky to have such a great father, and he gave me his name. So, I'm Joseph Junior and he's Joseph Senior. And throughout our lifetime, by choices I have made, we have been less close.
And by choices I have made recently, we have been more close, and that's a very important. But he never distanced himself from me. He never closed off his love to me. I just couldn't find a way to speak his language as an adult because my whole life I was hiding that I was gay until I was 16 or 17. And, of course, he always knew because he's my dad, and he used to call me Josephine as a child. Like, there was no shock when I told him I was gay.
But for me, I felt so dishonest that I was hiding who I really was from my dad and pretending to be straight. And then this guilt, and this fallout, and the shame afterwards, and thinking that he could never understand, and removing myself from my family and moving far away, and having less and less to do with him over the years, and then wondering, "How can I speak to my dad? How can I have this attachment to this connection?"
So, I remember when I lived in Dublin, I bought a car because my dad knows everything about cars. And I thought, "Oh, this will give us something to talk about, where we can have a, you know, a similar interest," and so that was lovely. And then I stopped drinking when I was 27 for a year and a half when I was 28. And that was another moment where we rekindled our friendship because my dad doesn't drink at all.
And then when I was 30, I started drinking again. And I lied to him about it, and I was deceiving. And this put a wedge between us, but he didn't put a wedge between us. I did. And then I tried to move to the Netherlands and didn't move to the Netherlands. And then I did move to the Netherlands, and he was all the time watching on the sidelines, and loving, and supporting, and I got here. And then, I suppose, when I lived in Ireland, I had a support network.
I had family, I had friends, I had a nice job, I had a career and identity. And when I moved here, I gave all of that up, and that was quite destructive and chaotic. And I don't know why I did that. I know I wanted to live here to be close to my brother, but I came here without a plan. And for several months, I had nothing. I mean, I had my brother, and I had life, and I had partying, but, I mean, I didn't have an identity, or a signature, or a friend network, or much of a family network beyond myself and my brother.
And so then, when I started working in Starbucks, when I started working in the sauna, I kind of regressed to being a teenager, and living a teenager life, and not taking very good care of myself. I'm partying quite a bit and having a kind of identity crisis as to who am I. And then I fell in love with a man. Myself and this man started using drugs, and it became quite a ritual, and it became very often.
And then the love went out of that relationship, but the relationship carried on. And that was not an ideal situation to be in, and we were living together. And it became that I was turning up for work and living for the weekends, and taking drugs in the weekends to forget or not face up to my problems, and not being able to call my dad because of shame and guilt and hiding, and not being able to tell my brother because of shame and guilt.
So, it was a lot like being gay in the closet or hiding as a child, but as an adult, being a drug addict and an alcoholic in the closet, and hiding it, even though everyone around me knew. So, when I was a kid, everyone knew I was gay. I was the only one that had that secret, and it was quite destructive. And when I was an adult, in my 30s, I would say everyone around me knew I had a problem with alcohol, only I was keeping that secret.
And so, a moment came to like a crash where I really was very careless about my life and my safety. And there's a hospital here called the GGD, or as Dutch people would say, the "GGD." And it's where you go for your sexual health checkups. And so, as a gay guy, I am a responsible enough gay guy. I would go there every three months, and they ask you a series of questions. "How many people have you slept with? Did you use protection? What was your role, top or bottom?" I think they say active or passive.
And so, I would always answer these questions really truthfully and very honestly. And so, for the first year and a half, they could see a regular enough pattern. But then when I started to hit the bottle and started to be abusive of drugs, I still was telling the truth, but my answers changed because my behavior changed. And they could see a dramatic shift in behavior, and the nurse noticed that I just wasn't the same person.
And I don't know if that nurse knows me as an individual, but, I mean, from the data they had, this was a different person. And so, she looked at me and she said, "There's a drop-in clinic here on Thursdays, it might be interesting for you." And so I went, and I looked at the poster. And the poster was in Dutch, and I didn't fully understand what it said, but I knew it was about drugs rehabilitation. I knew it was about sobriety or something, and I knew I was in a bad place, and I wanted help.
And so, I thought, "Okay, I'm just gonna drop in on a Thursday, and we'll all sit in a circle, and I'll listen to other people talk about their addiction. And I'll do this every Thursday for a few weeks. And if the moment comes that I feel ready to share, then I will share." So, I turn up, and it's not a circle. It's one-on-one assessment with a nurse, and there's no choice but to speak. So, it was not what I was expecting at all. And it says it quite blatantly on the poster, but I just didn't know because it was in Dutch.
So, I sit down, and there's a nurse there, and like, this is not what I was expecting. And the nurse says, "What were you expecting?" And I said that we would sit in a circle and they would listen. And he said, "Well, you can just sit here. You don't have to speak." And then I don't know if I can tell the nurse's personal story, but I think they disclose to everyone that they're volunteers and that they themselves have been through recovery and are in recovery. So, they give you this feeling of no judgment.
And this was my first moment ever admitting that perhaps I had an issue. And so, I think I spoke for 35 minutes without stopping from the moment that they disclosed that they were in recovery. And I just got it all out on the table, and all these things that I had been hiding, and all these secrets came to the surface, and I just felt so much better. And then, again, I jumped to the conclusion that I was gonna come back here every Thursday and see the same nurse and build on this work.
So, the nurse is like, "Okay, we're a referencing service, so we're gonna refer you to something that can help you, that we think might be supportive." I was like, "Oh, can I not just come back and see you next week?" And they're like, "No, I'm a volunteer. I'll be here in four weeks' time, but that's what probably too long. And I can leave notes, and you can come back next week and the next person can help you, but that's not really what we do." So, they were trying to be as kind and supportive as they could be, but what I wanted and what they offered were very different things.
So, they referred me to someone else, and I appreciated that referral from this nurse, and I left. And then I kind of blocked it out and went back to work and did my thing. And then a week later, I was supposed to go to this other place called Mainline, which is a really wonderful service in Amsterdam for gay guys that have a problem with drugs, or sex addiction, or cam sex addiction, or gay men that are out of control and want to regain control, or gay men that drink alcohol and take drugs in the weekends and are okay but want to talk to someone. Like whatever your space is, you can go there. It's in Hugo de Grootplein or Hugo de Grootplein, as they say. Anyway...
Evy: Okay. We'll reference that.
Joseph: So, I'm walking down Rozengracht on a Wednesday night towards this place, my next step in my realization of my need for help, and this part of my brain is trying to escape. And I'm looking at cafes going, "Go in there and have an espresso. You don't need help. You're not an alcoholic. You're not a drug addict, have a coffee. Your life is fine." And this other part of my brain pushing me on, going, "No, go. Speak to these people. Speak to them, speak to them."
So, I get down to the end of the street, I get to the roundabout, and this gentleman, Leon, meets me. And he's so kind, and he's so warm. And he brings me in, and I have my chat. And it was a two-hour meeting. And there was one other guy there. And he says at the start, "Myself and this other person have spent the summer talking. So, if you need more time than him tonight, he's willing to share it with you." So, I sat there, and I spoke for two hours solid. And it was just immediate therapy, and I got all this stuff out on the table.
And this was the group where you're still drinking alcohol and using drugs, and you just want to get back in control. And the advice that was given to me was, "Why don't you come to the fully sober group? This group might not be for you." And so, I wasn't able to take that advice, and I kept coming back to the group where you do use alcohol and you do use drugs for a number of weeks.
And then over time, and over talking, and listening, and sharing, I got to a safe space where I could finally admit that I was a full-on drug addict, that I was a full-on alcoholic. Like, it nearly broke me to get those words out. And as soon as they were out, they were disarmed, and they had no power over me, and I had power over them. And that's all because of Mainline. So, thank you so much, Leon. And thank you to me, too, for doing the work.
And then a person there brought me to NA, and AA, and all these different groups. And so, I went and I tried them and they were nice for a while. And then I started doing yoga, and then I started doing sports, and it seemed to me like my life was back on track. And it seemed to me that I had a handle on this addiction thing. And one of the best pieces of advice that they gave me to anyone who might be struggling was to trust three people and to tell three people who I really was, and to stop hiding from everyone.
And so, I sat down, and in my head, I thought about three people that I trusted most in Amsterdam that I could open up to and that I could speak to. And so, I picked them, and I went to them one by one, and I told them my story. And they all reacted very differently. One was almost no reaction at all, and like, "Okay, big deal. I'm here for you. You tell me whatever you want to tell me. You're still okay, honey. I still love you. Thank you for telling me. I'm honored. I'm flattered, but it makes no difference to me. We'll just have ginger ale when you come over, and we won't have wine. Big deal." And so, that was a really lovely reaction. And then the other person said, and he's a boy, he said, "Sister, we're in this together, I'm going nowhere."
And I was like, "Thanks, sister. "So, we're still sisters. And the other person could not handle it at all and freaked out and withdrew themselves from me and backed away, and that is life. Not everything works out, and some people will reject you. When you come out to people about your addiction, they're faced with their own relationship with addiction. When you tell someone that you're a little bit broken and you're trying to get better, they face up to their own cracks. So, you know, and I respect that person's honesty, that they didn't pretend that they could be there for me when they really couldn't.
And so, that started a new chapter in me being a real Joe Kearney again like I'd been at 18, or 21, or 27. And then I still was keeping it a secret from my housemate. I still was keeping it a secret from my co-workers. I still was keeping it a secret from my brother, my father, blah, blah, blah. So, there's all these levels. And my housemate works for a TV company, and this TV company was looking for people to go into a reality TV show.
And so, at the beginning of my sobriety, when I was just getting grounded, when I was just coming off the drink and just coming off the drugs and there was light at the end of the tunnel, and hope, I applied to be on a reality TV show program. And I wrote down on the application form, "I recently realized that I was very, very sick, and I worked very, very hard to get back from that. And I'm so proud of it, and that's why I want to be in the show."
So, they brought me in for an interview. They asked what all this was about, they filmed us. I had a mini-breakdown on camera. I told them my story. They loved it, they loved me. They took photographs of me. They offered me the job. And then I thought, "If any journalist digs around to my background and find out that I'm an alcoholic or a drug addict, it could end up in a tabloid. It might not, but it could. And if it does, maybe people here at Romeo will read about it.
And maybe people here at Romeo would think, 'I wish you told us before. I wish you'd given us a chance to react.'"
So, I thought, "Okay, what can I do to manage the situation before it even happens?" So, I thought, "I need to come into work, and I need to sit down with someone and I need to open up to them about my drug addiction and my alcoholism and just face it and see what happens."
So, I came into work, and I said to one of my dear colleagues, Cary, that I need to speak to him privately. And he took me into a room, and we sat on a sofa. And I looked him in the eyes and I said, "Cary, I'm gonna be in reality TV show. I've been offered this chance. It's filming for two weeks in Spain." He said, "Congratulations, that's amazing." I was like, "Thanks very much." And I said, "Boss, stories might come out about me that you might not know about me. And I think I should tell you now."
And he was like, "You could tell me whatever you want." And I said, "But Cary it's not work-related, it's not professional, it's quite personal. It's quite private." And he said, "That's fine, Joe. Go ahead." And so, I said, "Okay, I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I've been in recovery for about three months. I go to these groups, I go to these meetings." And he said, "Do you think you're the first alcoholic that I've ever worked with? Do you think you're the first drug addict that I've ever loved?" And I was like, "Cary, thank you so much." It was so beautiful. And so, I hugged him, and he said it didn't matter. And if anything came out, it would come out and just to do what was safe for me.
And then he said, "If you're gonna go and be in Spain, and there's a problem when you're filming this show, if you feel exposed or if you feel on shaky ground, just call me." And he said, "I'll be there for you." And this is in the moment when he is trying to make children happen in Mexico, when he and his family are trying to grow, and he's got his own life to take care of. And he offered me this love and this affection, which is a really integrated path of my recovery. And one of the main reasons that I love working in Romeo so much, that we are a family and that we accept each other, warts and all. So, that was a really wonderful thing that Cary did for me.
And then, this company posted me the contract to say, "We need you to sign this to be in a reality TV show." So, I took it to a place and I read it. And they said they were going to own my image in perpetuity, ad infinitum. And so, I looked at that, thought, "What does that even mean? In perpetuity, ad infinitum, my image? I'm going to give you my image?" And then they said, "If you do anything that reflects poorly on the image or the values of the company, you will suffer a €10,000 fine payable immediately. If you Tweet, give away the location when we're filming, there's a five grand fine payable immediately.
If you do anything to cause the cancellation of the show, there's a €1 million fine payable immediately." So, I looked at this and thought, "I don't wanna go to Spain and be in a show and then be bankrupt for the rest of my life because I sent some revealing tweet." I mean, I'm a drug addict and alcoholic in recovery. Like, my boundaries are shaky at the best of times. So, like, I can't. I can't sign up for this. So, I sent them an email to say, "Look, I don't know what the values of your company are. I work for a dating agency. I interview topless guys. I put sexy photos online. What are your core values? What is your company about? What might I do that could reflect poorly on you?"
And so, we emailed over and back about what the conversation, what the fit was. And I hand-shaped this beautiful email that I'm so proud of that listed every bad thing I had ever done and sent it to them saying, "Is this the kind of guy you want to sign up for your show?" And then the email stopped, and then they rang me, so there's nothing in writing for proof, and says, "We have no judgments of the things that you've done, and we celebrate you. And we think that you're wonderful, but we're just gonna check how our investors feel."
So, off they went to check with their investors. And sadly, their investors could not get behind the joker any brand, and that's fine. And in reflection, I think going to Spain for two weeks and giving up my security and my friend network at this intimate moment in recovery would have been a terrible idea. So, in the long run, it all worked out okay. I didn't get to be on TV. I didn't get to be on reality television show, but I got to carry on my sobriety.
And now, two years later, if I got offered a reality TV show tomorrow, I think I'm in a much stronger place to do it. Would I sign away my image to perpetuity? No. Would I send them the email of all my wrongdoings? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I also sent it to a friend in Ireland and her response was, "To be the intern that opens that email, what a shocking and memorable day it would be for them?"
Evy: But it's also kind of very black and white. And that sounds like the way I'm listening, it's kind of like, it's a reality TV that cannot handle reality.
Joseph: Reality, yeah. But I suppose I've done some things, you know, I have lived. I have lived.
Evy: Right?
Joseph: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, I suppose, I feel like though I'm not really getting into the crux of it, I'm kind of giving you the structure of the story, but not the causage, you know? Like, I don't know why I'm not getting to the fruit of the matter, but I suppose I was drinking alcohol to forget, and I was taking drugs to avoid. And I don't know how explicit I can be for your radio show. I was using cocaine, speed, ecstasy, weed, all of the alcohol.
With all of these, I felt like this could happen on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, and I'd be fine in the rest of the week. And I wouldn't use drugs, and I'd be responsible at work and I'd work really, really hard. And then the weekends would come, and I would let it all go and really destroying myself to the point that I possibly could nearly have died several times and just didn't care, just didn't care. And that's when I knew I had a problem.
There was moments where I was thinking, "If I go to sleep tonight and I don't wake up tomorrow, fine." And that is a horrible place to be. And that is when I knew I needed help. But then crystal meth found me. And so, when I was already in a place where I thought, "If I don't wake up tomorrow, so be it," and not caring how much that would hurt my father, or my brother and his wife and his children, or my other brother who lives here, and not thinking how much that would affect the friends that love me or the life that I've built. I'm being so selfish as to think if I don't wake up tomorrow, so be it.
Like, I was in a very dark place. And then I found crystal meth. I went to an even darker place. And for anyone who's never used it, please don't use it. It is incredibly addictive. You can be awake for days, just looking for more, and looking for more, and looking for more. And all the other drugs that I used and the alcohol, I would imagine, to a certain extent, you can contain them and wipe them away. And I don't know if it's better or worse that you can be a functional drunk and a functional drug addict. But with crystal meth, I was not functional.
Evy: Right. And it's the void that you cannot fill, is it?
Joseph: It's just indescribable. Like, it sticks to your teeth, it burns your gums, it burns your lungs. You can feel that it's poison, you can feel that it hurts you, and yet you want more. These lows and this high that you're constantly chasing, and then you enter into these, like, sex adventures, where it's really not about the sex, and it's all about the crystal meth. But you're pretending, "Oh, it's about the sex, it's about this phenomenal sex," which 99% of the time is dreadful, disappointing, unsatisfying sex. Like, it isn't... I don't know why every weekend you take the drugs to have the sex adventure, you think it's going to be great and every Monday you regret it and think, "It wasn't great."
Evy: Yeah. I really appreciate you speaking about this because I think people should really speak more about what happens.
Joseph: Oh, I think it's so important. Yeah. And this idea that drug addicts are different people that you'd never bump into, drug addicts are people that you are on the bus with. Drug addicts are people that you work in the office with, just it's really easy to hide for a very long time, it's very damaging, and it's quite prevalent. I mean, it's not only a gay man problem, but it's quite prevalent among a lot of gay guys in a lot of rich cities. And I feel like there's books coming out about it. There's newspaper articles coming out about it. There is visibility, but we need to, kind of, dispel the shame and just admit...
I shouldn't say we or you. It's one of the teachings of crystal meth addiction recovery. I feel that I need to talk about what I've done and to be honest about it. And hopefully, people listening that feel they want to reduce what they're doing will go and speak to a doctor or a nurse and not fear shame or judgment, and just see that there's help, and love, and support out there, and there's a way back. And no matter how bad it is, no matter what dreadful things you think you've done that no one else has done, I have done them. Don't worry. And I'm back, and I'm better. And there's really no low you can go to that is unforgivable, so just forgive yourself and look for help.
Evy: That's beautiful. And we're gonna edit that out because...
Joseph: I'm drinking bubbly water. It's not a drug, I promise.
Evy: That's intense.
Joseph: Yeah. I spoke that also I'm a newbie. I mean, I'm only coming up to... It'll be two years on the first of January. Oh, that's another thing. Gosh. How much time do we have?
Evy: Oh, we have all the time.
Joseph: Let's talk about love. I work in a dating agency, and we hope to help people find a friendship, and we hope to help people find love, and we hope to help people find a life and identity. And I myself, I'm always seeking love, and looking for friendship, and looking for connection. And two years ago, in December, I met this man called...I'm sure I can use his name, I'm sure he won't mind. I met this man called Barnaby.
And just by his name, I was in love with him. And we dated and had an intense connection, and it was really phenomenal and mind-blowing. And he was quite impressed that I wasn't drinking alcohol. But at the time, I'd given up alcohol and thought I could still do recreational drugs. No, I'd given up drugs as well. I met him. I'd given up alcohol and drugs, and he was impressed by it. And I was impressive, and it was good.
And then Christmas came, and he went to Berlin for New Years, and I was here. And I decided to go to a house party with strangers and just take drugs, I didn't use alcohol, and use drugs till 4 in the morning. And then I was thinking, "I'm dancing in a stranger's living room at 4 in the morning on New Year's Eve, not with friends, not with family, not with Barnaby, why am I doing any of this?" And so, I left that house, and I got back to my house.
And I woke up on the morning of the first of January and decided, "That's it. I am fully, fully sober." Now, I'd experimented with being sober, and I'd been to groups, and this is post the talk with the nurse and this is post-Mainline. This is me waking up at the first of January thinking, "That's it, I am now sober and fully committing to sobriety." So, Barnaby, the love of my life, we'd met two weeks earlier, came back from Berlin. And I met him, and I said, "I can't go on a love adventure with you and work on myself in being sober. They can't happen at the same time.
And I need to work on myself and be sober, so this has to stop." And he was so respectful and so mindful, and he gave me the space that I needed, and he gave me the love that I needed. I fully, truly believe, in that really short time of two and a half weeks that we loved each other, and it was beautiful. I know it's so short and so silly, but I believe it. And a year later, in my sobriety, we met again, just for him to check on me to see how I was doing. And a year later, he checked on me again.
So, he's a good one. He's a good fellow. Very respectful of my boundaries and my need for space and just checking on me because that connection was intense. But it was very hard for me to choose between myself or this love relationship, and I had to choose myself. And in the long run, it was the right decision. But why did I mention that in love? Oh, yes. So now, after two years of sobriety, nearly, and no drugs and no alcohol, I ended up going back to meetings. I'd stopped them. I'd done yoga. I'd done sports. And then through the jigs and the reels, as we say in Ireland, I ended up going back to meetings just for extra support.
And one meeting, a conversation came up about sex and love addiction anonymous, SLAA. And I thought, "Oh, that sounds like me." And I went on their website, and they have a list of 40 questions. "Do you ever feel like you have to have sex? Do you ever feel like you need to do what someone else is telling you rather than do what you want to do? Have you ever..." Like, I don't want to misquote them, but basically, they kind of described my personality in about 30 out of the 40 questions. And so, I thought I was gonna get a score at the end that would say, "You need to come to our group," but you don't. It's just 40 questions and you think about them.
Evy: It's reflective.
Joseph: Yeah. So, I thought about them, and I went to a group, and I sat down, and I listened to everyone's story. And I shared mine, and I felt like I was going home. Like, it was just such a good fit for me, way better than alcohol or drugs. Sex and love addiction was my true addiction, is my true addiction. And so, my abuse of drugs and my abuse of alcohol were expressions of my sex and love addiction, which is my core. And it took me two years of denial to work through in this sobriety to admit it to myself, and to feel like, "This is the actual problem."
And that made me realize that no matter how well I'm doing or how good I am, I can always find a new chapter or reveal a new layer. And so, I don't really know who I'll be two years from now or four years from now, but I know that I'm happy and that I'm in a good place. And I know that I have these support networks, and it's all wonderful. And I didn't have the esteem to admit that I was a sex and love addict. And I felt I needed to be a drug addict or an alcoholic because those were familiar to me, and those were things I could express. And sex and love addiction, it just seems so abstract and theoretical.
Evy: Right. It's like you were looking for problems. It's love. It's sex. It's good, right?
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I'm there now. I'm only new in this group. It's maybe six weeks in. And from going to them, I feel like I am working on the true core of the problem.
Evy: I don't know, I'm listening to you and the quote from Ram Dass is coming to my mind, which is, "We're only here in this earth to walk each other home."
Joseph: Oh, that's so beautiful.
Evy: And it's really like it's also like how you help yourself, but also how the world supports you as well. But it's a constant journey, right? It's a constant discovery and failure and getting up and walking further.
Joseph: Yeah. And that's one of the beautiful things about the British society, is when people die, they say that God calls him home. And I think that's such a beautiful expression for describing death. And my father is a gravedigger, and so death is part of our family, and it's part of a business that we're in. So, we think about death probably more than the average family. My mother died when I was 21.
And when I thought that God called her home, I thought, "How beautiful," because she loved God and really believed in Jesus, and Mary, and all of that. And I don't have that faith, sadly, that my mother had, but it's a nice connection to think that she's home. And then in recovery, in 12 steps, there is talk of providing community, and attachment, and home, and care. So, I think all of recovery, for me, I can't say for other people, is about connecting to the world as your honest self and making the world a, sort of, family, and bringing your real family into that connection.
Evy: Yeah. So, it's authenticity and connection in that way.
Joseph: Yeah. But I share a lot of my recovery story on my Facebook. And so, my family in Ireland see that, and you get these coins sometimes when you're in recovery as a marker of achievement over time, and I put those up on my Instagram or on my Facebook. And it's made my Auntie's come forward and like things on my pages, and it's made... My brother who lives in Ireland calls me occasionally, texts me. So, my true authentic self on my social media, of which we talked about earlier, about the fakeness of it, and I think that might be confronting for people. And I think people don't want to see it there, and that's where I put it because I feel like it's the true me.
Evy: Yeah, but it's only fair, I think. If you're brave enough to speak about it, why not post about it?
Joseph: Exactly.
Evy: Okay. Thank you very much for speaking to us.
Joseph: Oh, it was absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming and listening to an Irish man talk about himself for an hour.
Evy: I'm so inspired by you. I think you're amazing and brave person, and I wish you a lot of new discoveries and gentle transitions.
Joseph: Thank you so much.
Evy: Thank you.
Joseph: Thank you.
Evy: Where can people find you?
Joseph: Well, I suppose there's a few things I'd like to mention about that very briefly, very quickly. If anybody out there is in a crisis with addiction or if anybody is worried about their abuse of relationship to alcohol, or drugs, or sex, or love, please, please, please know that help is there, and help is never far away. And you can just google SLAA, and you will find amusing [SP] in your area. You can go and speak to your doctor. I swear to you, they will not judge you, and they will love you, and they will refer you to your nearest AA or NA.
Or if all of those 12-step programs seem not the fit for you, still speak to a doctor or a nurse, and they can find some kind of counseling, therapy, help, or support for you. And if you're in the Netherlands and live in Amsterdam, I would strongly recommend going to Mainline as a gay guy with a drug problem or a sex issue. And, to find me, you can find me on Twitter. I'm hilarious. I have really witty tweets. That's the best way to get in touch with me, @jtkearney.
Evy: Super, thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. You can find previous episodes, information about the guests, and transcripts of previous episodes and this current episode on www.worduppodcast.com. Yay. Is this your first podcast?
Joseph: Oh, podcast, I guess it is, yeah. I used to work in radio, very briefly. I was a political correspondent for 98 FM, and I followed this political party in Ireland called Fine Gael around the country for a week. It was wonderful.
Evy: Okay.
Transcript by Janice Erlbaum
Evy: This was very stressful. I don't appreciate all the stressful work Webster does.
Joseph: But I was also the weirdo in Ireland for not swearing, and people think that you are super posh or full of yourself.
Evy: Oh really?
Joseph: Yeah. But then we do say shite and feck, which we don't consider to be swear words. And people outside of Ireland think the feck is fuck but it's not. And they think that shite is shit but it's not.
Evy: Hello, and welcome to "Word Up Podcast." I'm Evy. And Webster is not here with us today, but I'm with our lovely guest, Joseph.
Joseph: Hello.
Evy: Hi, how are you today?
Joseph: I'm very well, how are you?
Evy: I'm very excited to have you here.
Joseph: Good. Yes, it's been a long time planning. We finally made it, yes.
Evy: Yeah. And we are here in your lovely office overlooking an amazing Amsterdam panorama.
Joseph: We do have a really beautiful view. What a pity we're on the radio. We're just next to Central Station, very central location indeed. Yeah.
Evy: And you are, I heard, social media wizard here.
Joseph: That's what they called me. Yes, the social media wizard, the social media storyteller. These are the things that I do. Yes.
Evy: And how did you get to be here?
Joseph: How did I come to this job, or to this country, or to this place?
Evy: Yeah, both. Everything.
Joseph: How did I get to be here?
Evy: Yeah.
Joseph: Well, once upon a time, a man called Joseph went to a beauty pageant called The Rose of Tralee Festival in County Kerry in Ireland. And there, he met a woman called Guinan. And he really liked her, and she really liked him. And they continued to see each other until the point that he asked her to marry him. And so, because they met at The Rose of Tralee Festival, the flowers for the wedding were roses. So, I am here because of a beauty pageant. Because of The Rose of Tralee Festival, Joseph and Guinan are my parents. And when I learned this wonderful story of union, I got a tattoo of a rose on my ankle.
And I know tattoo roses are the tackiest of all tattoos, and I love my rose tattoo so much. So, that's how they made me, I suppose. I'm one of three boys. But then I grew up in the Southwest of Ireland, and I loved talking, as many Irish people do. And my dad is an amazing storyteller. And my whole childhood was spent listening to him tell stories as he would be driving back from work and we might be with him in the lorry or in the car. He did many different jobs, and we listened to many different stories. And I suppose I learned the tradition of storytelling from my dad, just by listening.
And then I went to university, and I studied drama and performance arts. And then I did a master's in drama therapy, and I did a second masters in journalism. So, I'm very blessed and very lucky. And all along the way, in Ireland, in my culture, I was very exposed to theatre, and to drama, and to beauty. And we really celebrate the spoken word in Ireland, and we really celebrate poetry and drama. And part of our country is based on this tradition of storytelling. We have a National Theatre, the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. I worked there in ticket sales and as a tour guide when they were launching their tour guide program. So, I got to bring people through the National Theatre and onto the stage and tell stories about ghosts and the formation of our nation. So, that was lovely.
But all along the way, my brother was very fascinated with a particular green plant that is very illegal in Ireland. And so, his journey brought him to the Netherlands. And when I was in Dublin living my journey and my story, I was missing my brother and our closeness. And I was always saying to him, "One day, I'll come to the Netherlands if that's okay with you." And he was always saying, "Please come, please come."
And in 2009, I said, "Dara, I'm going to move over. I'm going to come live with you in the Netherlands. I'm going to quit my job here in Ireland, and we're going to see what happens." And he said, "Okay." And he asked around to get me a job, and he asked around to find me a place to live. And just three months before I left Ireland, I met this wonderful man, who I wonder if I can name him. I'm going to give him a pseudonym, just in case he's uncomfortable being included in the story. Let's call him Patrick because he's Irish.
Evy: Of course.
Joseph: And Patrick asked me not to move to the Netherlands. And Patrick loved me, and I loved Patrick. So, I said, "Okay, do you know what? I won't." And I rang up my brother, and I broke his heart. But I quit my job, and I quit my lease. And suddenly, I changed my plan. And so, I moved in with Patrick and his parents in his house in Dublin for the rest of the summer, and then I ended up staying in Ireland for five more years, always in the back of my head thinking, "I really should have gone to the Netherlands." And now I can't really go because I can't, you know, stir that up with my brother again. And things didn't work out with me and Patrick and life went on. And then I contacted my brother again and said, "Look, maybe I will come to the Netherlands this time. Do you trust me?" And he's like, "Of course, come, no problem."
So, I came over for the summer, and I'd saved up some money. And I had an amazing summer. And I didn't work at all, for the first time in my life. And I just partied and got distracted by the distractions of the Netherlands. And then I made some friends, and I joined a rugby team. And then my money was running out, and I was looking for work. And I thought, "Well, I'm very hireable." I mean, I'm lovely and, you know, I'm very likable and award-winning, and nobody was hiring me. It was like recession, and there was a gap in my CV. And I just moved here to party for months, so why would anyone hire me? So, I panicked, and I started going into cafes, and restaurants, and hotels, and Starbucks just here next to Central Station hired me.
So, at 33 years of age, I started serving coffee in Starbucks, and my manager was 19 years old. And it was amazing. I loved working in Starbucks because it reminded me of a time that I worked in the Hard Rock Cafe in Dublin, and this American, globalization, standardization of service that is sweet, and kind, and people are really passionate about their coffee. And all these young kids that I was working with were breathing youth into me. And after six months, I was like, "Am I going to stay in Starbucks for the rest of my life? Is this my career now? Or am I going to try and get back into journalism, and storytelling, and the things I'd done in Ireland?"
So, I started applying for jobs around the city. And another shop was going to hire me in a, sort of, marketing, communications role, but within the sex industry. And I thought, "That's really exciting." And so, I told Starbucks that I was leaving. I was gonna go work for this company and be part of their team. And I was really impressed by their commitment to, like, sexual expression, and gay beauty, and pride, and so on.
And then, in a heartbeat, the job they offered me was gone. And I don't know how it disappeared, but I already told Starbucks that I was leaving. And much like my leaving in Ireland in a speed bump, it was like like history repeating. And so, I was too proud to tell Starbucks that this job opportunity had disappeared. And so, I just carried on into the west and found a job somewhere else in Amsterdam, and I worked in a sauna for a year. And then the sauna was enough for me. I made lovely friends there, I had a nice time, and I thought to myself, "I need to get out of services industry."
So, I started looking for work again. And there's this dating app called Romeo, and they advertise their jobs through the dating app. And on the very day that I wanted a new job, they advertised social media officer. And I looked at the qualifications that they needed, and they suited everything I'd ever done in Ireland, and it really fitted who I was before I moved to the Netherlands. But nothing I'd done in the Netherlands would be suitable experience for this role. So, I thought, "Well, I'll just apply for it anyway." And it was the first time in a long time I'd applied for a grownup job. It was the first time in a long time I had to create a CV and write about projects and critically assess myself and analyze my skills.
And so, I did all of those. And I signed up for this website, and I built a CV on it, and I took out a year membership because I thought I'm gonna be looking for a grownup job for a year. And the first job I applied for was the social media officer at Romeo. And they did a Skype interview. I had to submit written work. There was a panel. There was a process selection. Then it was whittled down to, like, five candidates or three candidates, and I was brought in here for a face-to-face interview. And then I had to go back to work in the sauna and wait for the decision. And ultimately, they picked me, and they called me, and they offered me the job, and it was wonderful. And so, even though I joined the job recruitment agency for a year, I got the very first job I applied for.
Evy: It's amazing.
Joseph: Yeah, it's wonderful. But also, you know, in my brain, "Well, I paid for a year subscription, and I didn't get my..." Anyway, I got the job, and that is how I'm here in the sit before you today.
Evy: Oh, fantastic. What a story. I'm just, like, smiling. I'm, like, listening...
Joseph: Oh, there's so much more. Like, I edited it down. I know I can talk for hours. I kept it short.
Evy: It's lovely. But I'm wondering, what's the most exciting part about being social media wizard?
Joseph: Oh, yeah, so let's get deep into that. So, I was hired here three years ago, and I was replacing someone who was really good at his job. And he had set a really great standard for the voice of the company, and social media interaction, and storytelling, and content for the blog. And so, I stepped into these shoes that were still fairly warm from the person before me, and I was thinking, "Do I just try to repeat everything that happened before, or do we move in a new direction?" And so, what we started doing was checking on queer culture and reading what was available online and thinking, "How does that sit with our brand values, or how does that help Romeo to tell its story?"
And so, for a while, it was really wonderful. We could write about queer culture and sexual identity. Or also, I'm very interested in the leather scene, or I'm very curious about kink, and so I wrote an awful lot of kink articles. And for a golden year, we just wrote about whatever we wanted to write about, as long as we felt it fitted the values of Romeo. And then we communicate those stories on Twitter, on Instagram. We had Snapchat for a while, on YouTube. So, it was really fun. It was really like a no holds barred, unlimited creativity space.
Evy: Fantastic.
Joseph: Yeah, it was ideal. It was ideal. And then marketing, alongside social media, was doing global campaigns and advertising. There was a moment where we realized that social media wasn't fully supporting the global marketing campaign, so we needed to bring those stories closer together. And so, we needed to work closer together. But then marketing completely changed direction at some point in this. But there was a moment where I was sent to The Gay Games in Paris to follow a water polo team and to report on what they were doing, which was phenomenal.
There was a week where I was sent to European Gay Ski Week to go skiing, and to put it on Instagram. So, you know, there was some really fine luxury glamour jobs during that process of development and figuring out who we are and how we fit. And now, we've moved it more to be our social media and our storytelling online needs to be reflective of where our company is going and what our company is doing. Not so much what wonderful people are doing skiing in the middle of friends, or not so much how this huge gay sporting event might be going on in Tokyo or Paris. More sort of what are we doing to provide an excellent service, or what are we doing to make our platform accessible and safe? So, it's less about looking out, and it's more about communicating our story out to our audience.
Evy: Okay. I would imagine always, it's a lot of storytelling, but it's also very much process-oriented work, right?
Joseph: Yeah, we've moved. We've moved from queer culture storytelling, which is wonderful, to really focusing on our brand and focusing on the service that we provide. But I suppose if we talk about our core values as a dating app, you know, we believe in inclusion, and tolerance, acceptance, love, and we want men to feel that they have the freedom to explore their sexuality online and to express it. And so, if that, for you, is putting up a photo of you in a fishing boat, then that's your expression, go ahead and do it. And if that, for you, is a topless photo, which an awful lot of guys tend to like doing, then fine, that's for you, too.
But we don't want to limit ourselves to only being a, sort of, app or website where it's lots of topless photos and lots of guys looking for sex, which is great. Please come to Romeo and look for sex, but we also want it to be maybe you're looking for friendship, maybe you're traveling and you don't know anybody in Argentina. And you can go on to Romeo and find a local. And because Romeo is such a lovely, friendly online community, hopefully, the Romeo that you meet there in Argentina will also be as lovely and kind as our app is. And then, in Germany, we're really very popular, and a lot of people use Romeo there for, how do I describe it, social networking, almost to a professional level. Like, you might almost find a job through a friend on Romeo.
Evy: Wow. And as a social media expert, I'm really curious about how do you deal with your online personality and the reality of the personalities? Like, how do you deal with, when people try to maybe look better or have more filters on pictures?
Joseph: Oh, we just wrote some articles about this recently. But before we dive into that, I suppose, I never feel like I'm a social media expert, I suppose.
Evy: Okay, sorry.
Joseph: No, it's okay. Sorry. It's the first time we're talking about it. I suppose anybody that would use the... I shouldn't judge others but myself. Using the word experts suddenly closes a lot of doors to creativity, and learning, and growth. So, I suppose someone who's familiar with a bit of social media or who's interested or has a passion for it, but I always feel like I'm a student, and I always feel like I'm growing. And I remember I went to this amazing presentation by "Vice News" here in the Netherlands on Brand Beyond, where they were talking about their new way of investigating news.
And they put the story at the middle, and then they draw a circle around it, and they decide, "Will this end up on Twitter? Is this going on Snapchat? Is this going on Facebook?" And the experience map, the direction their new story is going to go in. And that means on the day that they go to cover the story, they already have this structure in place. And that, to me, was mind-blowing. And it might sound very simple, but...
So, when we set about a story, when we set about creating something, we already know where we're going to place it or where we're not going to place it, and that helps me to speak to design about our needs from them and our demands on them. Then they can evaluate how much time they have to devote to the story and how they can work in and around their agenda. So, it's all very organic. But back to people's perfect personas versus their real life, yeah, let's just jump straight into the toxic nature of social media, you know, the elephant in the room, and the toxic nature of excessive online activity in any sense, even in dating.
So, Instagram exists, and people love us. And you go on there and you take your best holiday photo. And you might have spent three days in, let's say, Vienna. And instead of enjoying Vienna and eating the food, and drinking the coffee, and talking to the locals, you're just checking out, "Where's my best Instagram location?" And you get a beautiful door, and you think, "Oh, this is gonna be gorgeous behind me in my selfie of my face in Vienna." And you've got it, and you put that up in line, but then you need to get another one, and another one, and another one. And so, you're not really on holidays in Vienna, and you're just at a photo shoot that happens to be in Austria.
Evy: Essentially, yeah.
Joseph: And a lot of people fall victim to that. And I myself have fallen victim to that so many times. And it's the way it's constructed and the way that social media works is that sometimes we can become removed from reality. And even though something was created to help you make connections and to find intimacy, removes it from you, and it's a bit of a paradox. So, I feel like engaging with that toxicity, you need to be careful at how much time you spend online, and you need to be careful with how you see yourself.
You should see yourself for real, which is very hard to do, and not see yourself as that person in the doorway in Vienna that got 6,000 likes. And so then, you look at your photo, and you put a filter on there, and the filter makes your skin better, or takes away the spots that you have, or hides your freckles. Or you can then doctor it to, like, fine details, that your hair can be nicer in your version. And I suppose that can be fun for a while, but then it can grow, and it can get out of control.
And not to pick just on Instagram. I mean, it's on Snapchat. It's just how we work in the world right now with photographs online and filters. So, one thing is to limit your time online. Another thing is just to do stuff that is in reality with people, like go for a run, go for a jog, jog with a friend, go for a swim, go to the gym. I look every week at how many hours I spend on my phone because my phone tells me, and I'm always competing with myself to get it down, and get it down, and get it less, and get it less.
But at the same time, I want to use these devices for the gifts that they bring, and the access to knowledge, and the access to information. I feel as long as it's fun and you're playing with it, and it's playful, it's good. But when the moment comes that you need to check these things, and you have to do these things before you go to bed, or first thing in the morning, or when you're out for lunch with a friend and you're not thinking about lunch and the friend, you're thinking about taking a photo of the lunch with your friend, I think this is where we're crossing boundaries.
Evy: Yeah. It's hard, isn't it, though?
Joseph: It's a tough one.
Evy: Yeah. Because it's always like... I mean, you know, we also do that in real life, you know, surgery, any way to better yourself, but there's also limit there also, the same way as it is for social media.
Joseph: Yeah. Well, a friend told me the story recently. Now, I haven't checked if it's true myself, so just validate.
Evy: Okay. Disclaimer. Yeah.
Joseph: This is a story I heard from a friend. Steve Jobs, God rest him, did not let his own children have an iPad, right, because they are so addictive. For the benefit of their mental health, he wouldn't let them have a product that his company was making. So, these things are addictive, and they're designed to make you depend on them.
And I think Androids are less addictive and better for your health, even though people enjoy using them less. So, to be careful with your own mental health, to be careful what your own propensity to addiction, like all human beings could potentially develop an unhealthy habit. I know I have myself, many times, and social media and digital devices are just part of that.
Evy: Yeah, of course. So, speaking about addiction, are there any other dangerous things in life that challenge you?
Joseph: Oh, my God, I have so many stories to tell you about addiction. I suppose we should start with... We were just mentioning there a moment ago, my father and how wonderful he is. I love my dad. My dad's amazing, and he's just done so many great... I'm so blessed and lucky to have such a great father, and he gave me his name. So, I'm Joseph Junior and he's Joseph Senior. And throughout our lifetime, by choices I have made, we have been less close.
And by choices I have made recently, we have been more close, and that's a very important. But he never distanced himself from me. He never closed off his love to me. I just couldn't find a way to speak his language as an adult because my whole life I was hiding that I was gay until I was 16 or 17. And, of course, he always knew because he's my dad, and he used to call me Josephine as a child. Like, there was no shock when I told him I was gay.
But for me, I felt so dishonest that I was hiding who I really was from my dad and pretending to be straight. And then this guilt, and this fallout, and the shame afterwards, and thinking that he could never understand, and removing myself from my family and moving far away, and having less and less to do with him over the years, and then wondering, "How can I speak to my dad? How can I have this attachment to this connection?"
So, I remember when I lived in Dublin, I bought a car because my dad knows everything about cars. And I thought, "Oh, this will give us something to talk about, where we can have a, you know, a similar interest," and so that was lovely. And then I stopped drinking when I was 27 for a year and a half when I was 28. And that was another moment where we rekindled our friendship because my dad doesn't drink at all.
And then when I was 30, I started drinking again. And I lied to him about it, and I was deceiving. And this put a wedge between us, but he didn't put a wedge between us. I did. And then I tried to move to the Netherlands and didn't move to the Netherlands. And then I did move to the Netherlands, and he was all the time watching on the sidelines, and loving, and supporting, and I got here. And then, I suppose, when I lived in Ireland, I had a support network.
I had family, I had friends, I had a nice job, I had a career and identity. And when I moved here, I gave all of that up, and that was quite destructive and chaotic. And I don't know why I did that. I know I wanted to live here to be close to my brother, but I came here without a plan. And for several months, I had nothing. I mean, I had my brother, and I had life, and I had partying, but, I mean, I didn't have an identity, or a signature, or a friend network, or much of a family network beyond myself and my brother.
And so then, when I started working in Starbucks, when I started working in the sauna, I kind of regressed to being a teenager, and living a teenager life, and not taking very good care of myself. I'm partying quite a bit and having a kind of identity crisis as to who am I. And then I fell in love with a man. Myself and this man started using drugs, and it became quite a ritual, and it became very often.
And then the love went out of that relationship, but the relationship carried on. And that was not an ideal situation to be in, and we were living together. And it became that I was turning up for work and living for the weekends, and taking drugs in the weekends to forget or not face up to my problems, and not being able to call my dad because of shame and guilt and hiding, and not being able to tell my brother because of shame and guilt.
So, it was a lot like being gay in the closet or hiding as a child, but as an adult, being a drug addict and an alcoholic in the closet, and hiding it, even though everyone around me knew. So, when I was a kid, everyone knew I was gay. I was the only one that had that secret, and it was quite destructive. And when I was an adult, in my 30s, I would say everyone around me knew I had a problem with alcohol, only I was keeping that secret.
And so, a moment came to like a crash where I really was very careless about my life and my safety. And there's a hospital here called the GGD, or as Dutch people would say, the "GGD." And it's where you go for your sexual health checkups. And so, as a gay guy, I am a responsible enough gay guy. I would go there every three months, and they ask you a series of questions. "How many people have you slept with? Did you use protection? What was your role, top or bottom?" I think they say active or passive.
And so, I would always answer these questions really truthfully and very honestly. And so, for the first year and a half, they could see a regular enough pattern. But then when I started to hit the bottle and started to be abusive of drugs, I still was telling the truth, but my answers changed because my behavior changed. And they could see a dramatic shift in behavior, and the nurse noticed that I just wasn't the same person.
And I don't know if that nurse knows me as an individual, but, I mean, from the data they had, this was a different person. And so, she looked at me and she said, "There's a drop-in clinic here on Thursdays, it might be interesting for you." And so I went, and I looked at the poster. And the poster was in Dutch, and I didn't fully understand what it said, but I knew it was about drugs rehabilitation. I knew it was about sobriety or something, and I knew I was in a bad place, and I wanted help.
And so, I thought, "Okay, I'm just gonna drop in on a Thursday, and we'll all sit in a circle, and I'll listen to other people talk about their addiction. And I'll do this every Thursday for a few weeks. And if the moment comes that I feel ready to share, then I will share." So, I turn up, and it's not a circle. It's one-on-one assessment with a nurse, and there's no choice but to speak. So, it was not what I was expecting at all. And it says it quite blatantly on the poster, but I just didn't know because it was in Dutch.
So, I sit down, and there's a nurse there, and like, this is not what I was expecting. And the nurse says, "What were you expecting?" And I said that we would sit in a circle and they would listen. And he said, "Well, you can just sit here. You don't have to speak." And then I don't know if I can tell the nurse's personal story, but I think they disclose to everyone that they're volunteers and that they themselves have been through recovery and are in recovery. So, they give you this feeling of no judgment.
And this was my first moment ever admitting that perhaps I had an issue. And so, I think I spoke for 35 minutes without stopping from the moment that they disclosed that they were in recovery. And I just got it all out on the table, and all these things that I had been hiding, and all these secrets came to the surface, and I just felt so much better. And then, again, I jumped to the conclusion that I was gonna come back here every Thursday and see the same nurse and build on this work.
So, the nurse is like, "Okay, we're a referencing service, so we're gonna refer you to something that can help you, that we think might be supportive." I was like, "Oh, can I not just come back and see you next week?" And they're like, "No, I'm a volunteer. I'll be here in four weeks' time, but that's what probably too long. And I can leave notes, and you can come back next week and the next person can help you, but that's not really what we do." So, they were trying to be as kind and supportive as they could be, but what I wanted and what they offered were very different things.
So, they referred me to someone else, and I appreciated that referral from this nurse, and I left. And then I kind of blocked it out and went back to work and did my thing. And then a week later, I was supposed to go to this other place called Mainline, which is a really wonderful service in Amsterdam for gay guys that have a problem with drugs, or sex addiction, or cam sex addiction, or gay men that are out of control and want to regain control, or gay men that drink alcohol and take drugs in the weekends and are okay but want to talk to someone. Like whatever your space is, you can go there. It's in Hugo de Grootplein or Hugo de Grootplein, as they say. Anyway...
Evy: Okay. We'll reference that.
Joseph: So, I'm walking down Rozengracht on a Wednesday night towards this place, my next step in my realization of my need for help, and this part of my brain is trying to escape. And I'm looking at cafes going, "Go in there and have an espresso. You don't need help. You're not an alcoholic. You're not a drug addict, have a coffee. Your life is fine." And this other part of my brain pushing me on, going, "No, go. Speak to these people. Speak to them, speak to them."
So, I get down to the end of the street, I get to the roundabout, and this gentleman, Leon, meets me. And he's so kind, and he's so warm. And he brings me in, and I have my chat. And it was a two-hour meeting. And there was one other guy there. And he says at the start, "Myself and this other person have spent the summer talking. So, if you need more time than him tonight, he's willing to share it with you." So, I sat there, and I spoke for two hours solid. And it was just immediate therapy, and I got all this stuff out on the table.
And this was the group where you're still drinking alcohol and using drugs, and you just want to get back in control. And the advice that was given to me was, "Why don't you come to the fully sober group? This group might not be for you." And so, I wasn't able to take that advice, and I kept coming back to the group where you do use alcohol and you do use drugs for a number of weeks.
And then over time, and over talking, and listening, and sharing, I got to a safe space where I could finally admit that I was a full-on drug addict, that I was a full-on alcoholic. Like, it nearly broke me to get those words out. And as soon as they were out, they were disarmed, and they had no power over me, and I had power over them. And that's all because of Mainline. So, thank you so much, Leon. And thank you to me, too, for doing the work.
And then a person there brought me to NA, and AA, and all these different groups. And so, I went and I tried them and they were nice for a while. And then I started doing yoga, and then I started doing sports, and it seemed to me like my life was back on track. And it seemed to me that I had a handle on this addiction thing. And one of the best pieces of advice that they gave me to anyone who might be struggling was to trust three people and to tell three people who I really was, and to stop hiding from everyone.
And so, I sat down, and in my head, I thought about three people that I trusted most in Amsterdam that I could open up to and that I could speak to. And so, I picked them, and I went to them one by one, and I told them my story. And they all reacted very differently. One was almost no reaction at all, and like, "Okay, big deal. I'm here for you. You tell me whatever you want to tell me. You're still okay, honey. I still love you. Thank you for telling me. I'm honored. I'm flattered, but it makes no difference to me. We'll just have ginger ale when you come over, and we won't have wine. Big deal." And so, that was a really lovely reaction. And then the other person said, and he's a boy, he said, "Sister, we're in this together, I'm going nowhere."
And I was like, "Thanks, sister. "So, we're still sisters. And the other person could not handle it at all and freaked out and withdrew themselves from me and backed away, and that is life. Not everything works out, and some people will reject you. When you come out to people about your addiction, they're faced with their own relationship with addiction. When you tell someone that you're a little bit broken and you're trying to get better, they face up to their own cracks. So, you know, and I respect that person's honesty, that they didn't pretend that they could be there for me when they really couldn't.
And so, that started a new chapter in me being a real Joe Kearney again like I'd been at 18, or 21, or 27. And then I still was keeping it a secret from my housemate. I still was keeping it a secret from my co-workers. I still was keeping it a secret from my brother, my father, blah, blah, blah. So, there's all these levels. And my housemate works for a TV company, and this TV company was looking for people to go into a reality TV show.
And so, at the beginning of my sobriety, when I was just getting grounded, when I was just coming off the drink and just coming off the drugs and there was light at the end of the tunnel, and hope, I applied to be on a reality TV show program. And I wrote down on the application form, "I recently realized that I was very, very sick, and I worked very, very hard to get back from that. And I'm so proud of it, and that's why I want to be in the show."
So, they brought me in for an interview. They asked what all this was about, they filmed us. I had a mini-breakdown on camera. I told them my story. They loved it, they loved me. They took photographs of me. They offered me the job. And then I thought, "If any journalist digs around to my background and find out that I'm an alcoholic or a drug addict, it could end up in a tabloid. It might not, but it could. And if it does, maybe people here at Romeo will read about it.
And maybe people here at Romeo would think, 'I wish you told us before. I wish you'd given us a chance to react.'"
So, I thought, "Okay, what can I do to manage the situation before it even happens?" So, I thought, "I need to come into work, and I need to sit down with someone and I need to open up to them about my drug addiction and my alcoholism and just face it and see what happens."
So, I came into work, and I said to one of my dear colleagues, Cary, that I need to speak to him privately. And he took me into a room, and we sat on a sofa. And I looked him in the eyes and I said, "Cary, I'm gonna be in reality TV show. I've been offered this chance. It's filming for two weeks in Spain." He said, "Congratulations, that's amazing." I was like, "Thanks very much." And I said, "Boss, stories might come out about me that you might not know about me. And I think I should tell you now."
And he was like, "You could tell me whatever you want." And I said, "But Cary it's not work-related, it's not professional, it's quite personal. It's quite private." And he said, "That's fine, Joe. Go ahead." And so, I said, "Okay, I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I've been in recovery for about three months. I go to these groups, I go to these meetings." And he said, "Do you think you're the first alcoholic that I've ever worked with? Do you think you're the first drug addict that I've ever loved?" And I was like, "Cary, thank you so much." It was so beautiful. And so, I hugged him, and he said it didn't matter. And if anything came out, it would come out and just to do what was safe for me.
And then he said, "If you're gonna go and be in Spain, and there's a problem when you're filming this show, if you feel exposed or if you feel on shaky ground, just call me." And he said, "I'll be there for you." And this is in the moment when he is trying to make children happen in Mexico, when he and his family are trying to grow, and he's got his own life to take care of. And he offered me this love and this affection, which is a really integrated path of my recovery. And one of the main reasons that I love working in Romeo so much, that we are a family and that we accept each other, warts and all. So, that was a really wonderful thing that Cary did for me.
And then, this company posted me the contract to say, "We need you to sign this to be in a reality TV show." So, I took it to a place and I read it. And they said they were going to own my image in perpetuity, ad infinitum. And so, I looked at that, thought, "What does that even mean? In perpetuity, ad infinitum, my image? I'm going to give you my image?" And then they said, "If you do anything that reflects poorly on the image or the values of the company, you will suffer a €10,000 fine payable immediately. If you Tweet, give away the location when we're filming, there's a five grand fine payable immediately.
If you do anything to cause the cancellation of the show, there's a €1 million fine payable immediately." So, I looked at this and thought, "I don't wanna go to Spain and be in a show and then be bankrupt for the rest of my life because I sent some revealing tweet." I mean, I'm a drug addict and alcoholic in recovery. Like, my boundaries are shaky at the best of times. So, like, I can't. I can't sign up for this. So, I sent them an email to say, "Look, I don't know what the values of your company are. I work for a dating agency. I interview topless guys. I put sexy photos online. What are your core values? What is your company about? What might I do that could reflect poorly on you?"
And so, we emailed over and back about what the conversation, what the fit was. And I hand-shaped this beautiful email that I'm so proud of that listed every bad thing I had ever done and sent it to them saying, "Is this the kind of guy you want to sign up for your show?" And then the email stopped, and then they rang me, so there's nothing in writing for proof, and says, "We have no judgments of the things that you've done, and we celebrate you. And we think that you're wonderful, but we're just gonna check how our investors feel."
So, off they went to check with their investors. And sadly, their investors could not get behind the joker any brand, and that's fine. And in reflection, I think going to Spain for two weeks and giving up my security and my friend network at this intimate moment in recovery would have been a terrible idea. So, in the long run, it all worked out okay. I didn't get to be on TV. I didn't get to be on reality television show, but I got to carry on my sobriety.
And now, two years later, if I got offered a reality TV show tomorrow, I think I'm in a much stronger place to do it. Would I sign away my image to perpetuity? No. Would I send them the email of all my wrongdoings? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I also sent it to a friend in Ireland and her response was, "To be the intern that opens that email, what a shocking and memorable day it would be for them?"
Evy: But it's also kind of very black and white. And that sounds like the way I'm listening, it's kind of like, it's a reality TV that cannot handle reality.
Joseph: Reality, yeah. But I suppose I've done some things, you know, I have lived. I have lived.
Evy: Right?
Joseph: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, I suppose, I feel like though I'm not really getting into the crux of it, I'm kind of giving you the structure of the story, but not the causage, you know? Like, I don't know why I'm not getting to the fruit of the matter, but I suppose I was drinking alcohol to forget, and I was taking drugs to avoid. And I don't know how explicit I can be for your radio show. I was using cocaine, speed, ecstasy, weed, all of the alcohol.
With all of these, I felt like this could happen on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, and I'd be fine in the rest of the week. And I wouldn't use drugs, and I'd be responsible at work and I'd work really, really hard. And then the weekends would come, and I would let it all go and really destroying myself to the point that I possibly could nearly have died several times and just didn't care, just didn't care. And that's when I knew I had a problem.
There was moments where I was thinking, "If I go to sleep tonight and I don't wake up tomorrow, fine." And that is a horrible place to be. And that is when I knew I needed help. But then crystal meth found me. And so, when I was already in a place where I thought, "If I don't wake up tomorrow, so be it," and not caring how much that would hurt my father, or my brother and his wife and his children, or my other brother who lives here, and not thinking how much that would affect the friends that love me or the life that I've built. I'm being so selfish as to think if I don't wake up tomorrow, so be it.
Like, I was in a very dark place. And then I found crystal meth. I went to an even darker place. And for anyone who's never used it, please don't use it. It is incredibly addictive. You can be awake for days, just looking for more, and looking for more, and looking for more. And all the other drugs that I used and the alcohol, I would imagine, to a certain extent, you can contain them and wipe them away. And I don't know if it's better or worse that you can be a functional drunk and a functional drug addict. But with crystal meth, I was not functional.
Evy: Right. And it's the void that you cannot fill, is it?
Joseph: It's just indescribable. Like, it sticks to your teeth, it burns your gums, it burns your lungs. You can feel that it's poison, you can feel that it hurts you, and yet you want more. These lows and this high that you're constantly chasing, and then you enter into these, like, sex adventures, where it's really not about the sex, and it's all about the crystal meth. But you're pretending, "Oh, it's about the sex, it's about this phenomenal sex," which 99% of the time is dreadful, disappointing, unsatisfying sex. Like, it isn't... I don't know why every weekend you take the drugs to have the sex adventure, you think it's going to be great and every Monday you regret it and think, "It wasn't great."
Evy: Yeah. I really appreciate you speaking about this because I think people should really speak more about what happens.
Joseph: Oh, I think it's so important. Yeah. And this idea that drug addicts are different people that you'd never bump into, drug addicts are people that you are on the bus with. Drug addicts are people that you work in the office with, just it's really easy to hide for a very long time, it's very damaging, and it's quite prevalent. I mean, it's not only a gay man problem, but it's quite prevalent among a lot of gay guys in a lot of rich cities. And I feel like there's books coming out about it. There's newspaper articles coming out about it. There is visibility, but we need to, kind of, dispel the shame and just admit...
I shouldn't say we or you. It's one of the teachings of crystal meth addiction recovery. I feel that I need to talk about what I've done and to be honest about it. And hopefully, people listening that feel they want to reduce what they're doing will go and speak to a doctor or a nurse and not fear shame or judgment, and just see that there's help, and love, and support out there, and there's a way back. And no matter how bad it is, no matter what dreadful things you think you've done that no one else has done, I have done them. Don't worry. And I'm back, and I'm better. And there's really no low you can go to that is unforgivable, so just forgive yourself and look for help.
Evy: That's beautiful. And we're gonna edit that out because...
Joseph: I'm drinking bubbly water. It's not a drug, I promise.
Evy: That's intense.
Joseph: Yeah. I spoke that also I'm a newbie. I mean, I'm only coming up to... It'll be two years on the first of January. Oh, that's another thing. Gosh. How much time do we have?
Evy: Oh, we have all the time.
Joseph: Let's talk about love. I work in a dating agency, and we hope to help people find a friendship, and we hope to help people find love, and we hope to help people find a life and identity. And I myself, I'm always seeking love, and looking for friendship, and looking for connection. And two years ago, in December, I met this man called...I'm sure I can use his name, I'm sure he won't mind. I met this man called Barnaby.
And just by his name, I was in love with him. And we dated and had an intense connection, and it was really phenomenal and mind-blowing. And he was quite impressed that I wasn't drinking alcohol. But at the time, I'd given up alcohol and thought I could still do recreational drugs. No, I'd given up drugs as well. I met him. I'd given up alcohol and drugs, and he was impressed by it. And I was impressive, and it was good.
And then Christmas came, and he went to Berlin for New Years, and I was here. And I decided to go to a house party with strangers and just take drugs, I didn't use alcohol, and use drugs till 4 in the morning. And then I was thinking, "I'm dancing in a stranger's living room at 4 in the morning on New Year's Eve, not with friends, not with family, not with Barnaby, why am I doing any of this?" And so, I left that house, and I got back to my house.
And I woke up on the morning of the first of January and decided, "That's it. I am fully, fully sober." Now, I'd experimented with being sober, and I'd been to groups, and this is post the talk with the nurse and this is post-Mainline. This is me waking up at the first of January thinking, "That's it, I am now sober and fully committing to sobriety." So, Barnaby, the love of my life, we'd met two weeks earlier, came back from Berlin. And I met him, and I said, "I can't go on a love adventure with you and work on myself in being sober. They can't happen at the same time.
And I need to work on myself and be sober, so this has to stop." And he was so respectful and so mindful, and he gave me the space that I needed, and he gave me the love that I needed. I fully, truly believe, in that really short time of two and a half weeks that we loved each other, and it was beautiful. I know it's so short and so silly, but I believe it. And a year later, in my sobriety, we met again, just for him to check on me to see how I was doing. And a year later, he checked on me again.
So, he's a good one. He's a good fellow. Very respectful of my boundaries and my need for space and just checking on me because that connection was intense. But it was very hard for me to choose between myself or this love relationship, and I had to choose myself. And in the long run, it was the right decision. But why did I mention that in love? Oh, yes. So now, after two years of sobriety, nearly, and no drugs and no alcohol, I ended up going back to meetings. I'd stopped them. I'd done yoga. I'd done sports. And then through the jigs and the reels, as we say in Ireland, I ended up going back to meetings just for extra support.
And one meeting, a conversation came up about sex and love addiction anonymous, SLAA. And I thought, "Oh, that sounds like me." And I went on their website, and they have a list of 40 questions. "Do you ever feel like you have to have sex? Do you ever feel like you need to do what someone else is telling you rather than do what you want to do? Have you ever..." Like, I don't want to misquote them, but basically, they kind of described my personality in about 30 out of the 40 questions. And so, I thought I was gonna get a score at the end that would say, "You need to come to our group," but you don't. It's just 40 questions and you think about them.
Evy: It's reflective.
Joseph: Yeah. So, I thought about them, and I went to a group, and I sat down, and I listened to everyone's story. And I shared mine, and I felt like I was going home. Like, it was just such a good fit for me, way better than alcohol or drugs. Sex and love addiction was my true addiction, is my true addiction. And so, my abuse of drugs and my abuse of alcohol were expressions of my sex and love addiction, which is my core. And it took me two years of denial to work through in this sobriety to admit it to myself, and to feel like, "This is the actual problem."
And that made me realize that no matter how well I'm doing or how good I am, I can always find a new chapter or reveal a new layer. And so, I don't really know who I'll be two years from now or four years from now, but I know that I'm happy and that I'm in a good place. And I know that I have these support networks, and it's all wonderful. And I didn't have the esteem to admit that I was a sex and love addict. And I felt I needed to be a drug addict or an alcoholic because those were familiar to me, and those were things I could express. And sex and love addiction, it just seems so abstract and theoretical.
Evy: Right. It's like you were looking for problems. It's love. It's sex. It's good, right?
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I'm there now. I'm only new in this group. It's maybe six weeks in. And from going to them, I feel like I am working on the true core of the problem.
Evy: I don't know, I'm listening to you and the quote from Ram Dass is coming to my mind, which is, "We're only here in this earth to walk each other home."
Joseph: Oh, that's so beautiful.
Evy: And it's really like it's also like how you help yourself, but also how the world supports you as well. But it's a constant journey, right? It's a constant discovery and failure and getting up and walking further.
Joseph: Yeah. And that's one of the beautiful things about the British society, is when people die, they say that God calls him home. And I think that's such a beautiful expression for describing death. And my father is a gravedigger, and so death is part of our family, and it's part of a business that we're in. So, we think about death probably more than the average family. My mother died when I was 21.
And when I thought that God called her home, I thought, "How beautiful," because she loved God and really believed in Jesus, and Mary, and all of that. And I don't have that faith, sadly, that my mother had, but it's a nice connection to think that she's home. And then in recovery, in 12 steps, there is talk of providing community, and attachment, and home, and care. So, I think all of recovery, for me, I can't say for other people, is about connecting to the world as your honest self and making the world a, sort of, family, and bringing your real family into that connection.
Evy: Yeah. So, it's authenticity and connection in that way.
Joseph: Yeah. But I share a lot of my recovery story on my Facebook. And so, my family in Ireland see that, and you get these coins sometimes when you're in recovery as a marker of achievement over time, and I put those up on my Instagram or on my Facebook. And it's made my Auntie's come forward and like things on my pages, and it's made... My brother who lives in Ireland calls me occasionally, texts me. So, my true authentic self on my social media, of which we talked about earlier, about the fakeness of it, and I think that might be confronting for people. And I think people don't want to see it there, and that's where I put it because I feel like it's the true me.
Evy: Yeah, but it's only fair, I think. If you're brave enough to speak about it, why not post about it?
Joseph: Exactly.
Evy: Okay. Thank you very much for speaking to us.
Joseph: Oh, it was absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming and listening to an Irish man talk about himself for an hour.
Evy: I'm so inspired by you. I think you're amazing and brave person, and I wish you a lot of new discoveries and gentle transitions.
Joseph: Thank you so much.
Evy: Thank you.
Joseph: Thank you.
Evy: Where can people find you?
Joseph: Well, I suppose there's a few things I'd like to mention about that very briefly, very quickly. If anybody out there is in a crisis with addiction or if anybody is worried about their abuse of relationship to alcohol, or drugs, or sex, or love, please, please, please know that help is there, and help is never far away. And you can just google SLAA, and you will find amusing [SP] in your area. You can go and speak to your doctor. I swear to you, they will not judge you, and they will love you, and they will refer you to your nearest AA or NA.
Or if all of those 12-step programs seem not the fit for you, still speak to a doctor or a nurse, and they can find some kind of counseling, therapy, help, or support for you. And if you're in the Netherlands and live in Amsterdam, I would strongly recommend going to Mainline as a gay guy with a drug problem or a sex issue. And, to find me, you can find me on Twitter. I'm hilarious. I have really witty tweets. That's the best way to get in touch with me, @jtkearney.
Evy: Super, thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. You can find previous episodes, information about the guests, and transcripts of previous episodes and this current episode on www.worduppodcast.com. Yay. Is this your first podcast?
Joseph: Oh, podcast, I guess it is, yeah. I used to work in radio, very briefly. I was a political correspondent for 98 FM, and I followed this political party in Ireland called Fine Gael around the country for a week. It was wonderful.
Evy: Okay.
Transcript by Janice Erlbaum