Joe runs an informal rehab clinic every Monday and Thursday night in his own flat. Informal, because he doesn't think of it as a rehab clinic, and he's certainly got no fancy name for it. His regulars just refer to the sessions as "Joe's". Joe tries to help the people who come to him through whatever means he can, even going as far as to keep people in a locked room of his own flat, feeding and taking care of them, if they're committed enough to try going cold turkey. His biweekly sessions are chat sessions. The regulars boost each others' morales through conversation, and any newcomers are won over by a mix of Joe's jokes and anecdotes. He prefers to talk about different people, rather than discuss his own past as a junkie, saying that if he shows them just how many people have already gone through this, then they'll realise that they can too. An example of one of his anecdotes is recorded here, the Frankie Calzone speech.
Most of you here today know, or have heard of, Frankie Calzone. Those of you that have had the honour of talking to him will know that he's fiercely proud to be bald. If any of you ever ask him why he's bald, he'll tell you two things: pain, and questions. When he was younger, Frankie got into all kinds of shit. After a couple of years, he ended up spending most of his days bombed out of his head, wandering in that limbo between Heaven and Hell. One day he had one of those rare moments of clarity, and he asked himself, "Why? Why, in the name of anything you care to mention, am I doing this? What, the Hell, for?" So he quit drugs. Just like that. Well, you all know, there's no such thing as 'just like that'. Frankie was now in the worst Hell of them all. But there was one thing that kept him going. Just one thing that stopped him from ending it all the easy way. Pain. Frankie felt pain, and it made him feel alive. And he knew that as long as he stayed alive today, and alive tonight, he'd be alive tomorrow as well. And slowly, slowly, he got better. Of course, Frankie is always going to be an ex-junkie. You never get over it completely. But if it hadn't been for questions, he would never have stopped the drugs, and if it hadn't been for pain, he would have died young with a full head of hair. And that is why Frankie Calzone is bald.
Joe hides a dark secret. He was never actually a junkie. Sure, he did hash, but everyone did, and he always took it in moderation. So Joe has never really gone through the experience of trying to get off the drugs. What he has been through, though, is the experience of watching a loved one dying slowly but surely from the drugs. Joe's brother, Luke, was a junkie, and he died a junkie. His love for his brother, the pain he felt watching his brother die, the helplessness he felt watching his brother die, all make Joe the man he is today - a man with a mission. Each person he manages to help off the drugs is a soul saved to live another day. He jokes that he feels like a midwife, because he's helping them to come into the world again, into a new life. But behind all the jokes, all the anecdotes, lies Joe's past. Often, at the dead of night, Joe breaks down into an emotional wreck, but when he's facing his clients - no, his flock - he is the pillar of strength that they need, and that they need to find inside themselves. Why should he tell them that he is an ex-junkie? To win their trust. When you're in a state like that, you know that no one can understand what you're going through. No one, unless they've been through it themselves. Joe is too good an actor, and too filled with emotions, to be found out. And his friends need him too much.