"I've still got to be here because there are people that care about me more than I care about me. And so I know that I can't go anywhere."
CONTENT WARNING
This interview discusses suicidal feelings
Ten years ago, former Hollyoaks actor turned viral sensation, Joe Tracini was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), a condition that around 2% of the country will live with at some point. BPD severely affects how a person thinks and feels about themselves and other people, leading to intense, unstable emotions, chronic insecurity and intrusive thoughts.
This week (Monday 13th May at 10pm), as part of Mental Health Awareness Week, Channel 4 are airing his debut documentary, Me and The Voice in My Head in which he introduces us to Mick, the voice inside his head who wants to constantly hurt him.
Over the past decade, Joe has battled drug and alcohol addiction, tried to kill himself six times and experienced 12 panic attacks on stage, which have seen his comedy career grind to a halt. Joe hopes that by exploring his childhood, he can finally get a handle on his BPD and get through his stand-up comedy show that he hopes will reignite his career. But will Mick ruin it all?
I recently caught up with Joe Tracini to talk about the process of making such a personal documentary, his reasons for being so honest about his struggles, working on Hollyoaks as well as his plans to return to the stage and more.
Firstly, how are you today?
I'm alright, yeah. Depends what day it is, but I'm doing alright.
Do you like answering that question?
A couple of years ago, I made the decision to always answer that question honestly. It was a conscious decision to go - I haven't got the energy to keep pretending. So being asked is kind of alright now.
If it's ever somebody that knows me, or seen the shit that I do, they answer honestly as well, which is lovely. I think people hesitate sometimes to ask about my brain shit, because they don't really want to know and it makes you think about it.
But the fact is, with me, my brain is so fucked, I'm always thinking about it anyway, so if somebody asks "How are you?", that just gives me the space to be able to tell them how I am. You can't remind me of all the things I can't stand about myself, because they're rattling around all the time.
Congratulations on the documentary. It moved me, informed me and entertained me. How did it first come about?
Thank you. When we came out of the first lockdown in 2020, a lot of people got in touch wanting to make a documentary. Like 20/25 people and I met with them, not all at the same time, and did a taster with one of them.
It made me decide that I was not going to do a documentary with anybody that wanted to make one about me, without me. I knew I wanted to control something and if I was going to be able to do it, I wanted to do it the right way.
I was in for something with Hungry Bear (producers of Me and The Voice in My Head) and they were so lovely, I spent about 18 months to two years with them, developing stuff. So that's where it came from.
I was pitching light entertainment shows about suicide, which is a bit weird and Channel 4 went "He seems fine, a bit weird, but fine, but nobody knows who he is" so they said to do something else first, which is where this came from.
The fact they, Hungry Bear and Channel 4, gave us the opportunity to do this and trusted me enough to be as honest as I have, in the tone that I have, is wonderful.
That was one of the many things I enjoyed about the documentary. How important was the tone of the piece to you?
I really appreciate that. Thank you. Because the only people I know who have seen it, are fucking in it, so I'm so pleased that's how you felt. Thank you.
That was something that was really important to me all the way along. With the actuality stuff we did with the family, the live things that we did and then I'm doing the voiceover and the scripted stuff, it was really important to me that my tone didn't change across the whole thing.
That was really important to me, and again, they gave me the time and the space to be able to make that as consistent as I could. I am very proud of what we put together and that's not something I say easily. Pride is not something that sweats out of me, but I am proud.
And it's nice, because over the last couple of years I've done a few things that I'd always wanted to do, but really struggled with them all. Particularly when you get to the point where something is done and you end up going "Shit. I don't like that." But I do like this. So I'm very very grateful to everybody who let me do whatever I wanted to do.
When did you film it?
All last year, so I think we started filming it in June and then all the way through to September. Then when we finished, they went into the edit with it - Tom and Tommy were the two directors who worked with me on it - and a nice fella called Barney, who was the runner. He was lovely.
One of the Toms and a guy called Gary, who's an editor and is fucking amazing, spent three months editing it. So they were editing it for as long as we were filming it. Again, something that's not normally done, I was in the room. They let me sit in the edit and nothing was in that I didn't want to be in. It was up to me,
The scripted stuff was the last thing we did, sort of October and November. Obviously I'd shot quite a lot of stuff throughout the filming, but once we had an edit and knew what it was going to be, that's when I started to write the script.
What made you want to include the scripted elements in the documentary?
The reason it was important for me, was because nobody laughs at something they don't like. So if you can make some somebody laugh, they relax and listen more, because you might say something funny again. And that made them feel nice. It's so important to do this with things that are difficult to talk about, because if you can make somebody laugh about it, they immediately feel better about the situation.
I never take for granted the severity of the things that I am talking about and I think that's really important, because I understand that being this open is a commitment, to myself and my family and friends, especially to take the piss, you know, of myself.
Given I knew what we'd filmed... because I'm so unwell and through the course of the filming, I wasn't getting better, the reason that the scripted bits were so important was because I need to show a different side that made it funny. Just to give an idea of what it's like.
If you hear something that's really difficult to listen to, or something emotional that's really hard to watch, if you can immediately take the piss out of it, for me, if everything had some jokes in it, especially hard stuff, it just breaks it a little bit and you can relax more.
Also, it keeps people engaged, especially when the shit you're talking about is hard to listen to. Everybody says about talking - "You should tell somebody" - but nobody knows what to say and nobody's told how to listen.
I don't envy anyone in those sorts of situations, because it is a nightmare to be honest about how you feel. I say that, having answered honestly for at least four years now, it never gets any easier to tell somebody I'm not alright.
A lot of your honesty is through social media. Why do you choose to be so open online?
It's because I got to a point in 2018 I think it was, where I was sober and clean but that was when the BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) was really... I was like "OK, why am I fucking everything up? Because I've sorted the problems." - and I went into rehab for the last time. I went in for two weeks. I hadn't relapsed, but I knew that I was going to kill myself and I knew I had to do something to shake it.
So I went into the rehab and when I came out of there, the only thing I hadn't done is been honest about it publicly and I was actually feeling quite good about coming out and saying it. I knew I had to do something I hadn't done before and the only thing I hadn't done before was tell people about it.
People knew when I was off my nut and stuff like that, but what I hadn't done was be honest about the mental illness side of it. So the first thing that I did during Mental Health Awareness Week six years ago, was write a thing in the Metro and everything then came off the back of that.
It was just me sincerely going "I've tried pretty much everything else. Hopefully this works." And six years on, it's helping.
Social media can be a negative place but whenever you post and I scroll through the comments, your vulnerability and openness is often met with a warmth and kindness you rarely see. Do you take the time to sit and read through those comments?
I make a concerted effort to read them, I do. Not least of all because I really appreciate that people take the time to say stuff. There is a part of Instagram that I only found out existed in like 2022, the direct message bit, so I found out about that after all the lockdowns and I'm still working through them.
I get sent a lot of things, nobody ever makes it weird, and on my worst days, I've always got lists of comments to read on Facebook, thousands of people. And I still do it. I force myself, on a bad day, to go and read them, because I know that even though I don't agree with nice things, I do know that other people are being honest. And if they've taken the time to say that...
This is what the relentlessness of this is for me, knowing facts, but not knowing the right feelings. It's a nightmare and it's why I completely understand why on a daily basis, people who have this, kill themselves. Because it's a nightmare. I'm knackered. And it's so cruel because I'm so aware of the fact. That's the thing. There's a level of self awareness but I'm like "Fuck this!"
Let's talk about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), how would you best describe it?
I'd describe it as a pound shop Bipoplar. The emotional equivalent of giving an eight-year-old a job and a car and saying good luck. Essentially, if you can think of a mental illness, that's in it, somewhere. It shouldn't be called a personality disorder. It's not that. It's an emotional disorder. I feel things wrong.
As much as there are other things that happened, all of my actions, all of my thoughts are all related to emotions that don't match the thing that's going on. Which is why it's tiring and terrifying. It's mental. I'm 35 and not too long ago - I live with Holly, my girlfriend - and I remember being sat on the couch, it was in the evening about half past ten, and I turned around and she was gone. She wasn't on the sofa. My heart went and I went "Fuck! Holly. Holly!"
She was brushing her teeth, but my brain and body told me she's died. She's not here and she's died. I'm like... that's mental, because she's brushing her teeth! It's that kind of relentlessness that makes it draining, to say the least. Which is why I've stopped keeping it to myself.
There are so many other people in the world that have been very open about the fact they want to help. So I'm not ashamed. There's a lot of shit I've done that I'm ashamed of, but I've tried being the only one that knows that this shit happened and it's not worked.
I don't know how much longer we've all got here. I don't know what's happening. Life's the only thing going on. So I'm just going to tell everybody everything. It can't get worse.
When did Mick first appear? When did you first come up with him?
I came up with Mick in 2018, I think it was, and it was because... well, actually, to answer your question, the first time that I remember coming up with Mick, and I talk about it in my book, is when I stole a large amount of money from a friend of mine. Obviously it's something I'm not proud of and I returned the money, but it's still what I consider to be the worst thing I've ever done. It was also the last worst thing I've ever done.
It was at that point that my family, my friends and I in a certain way, found out about it. I remember, it was my ex-girlfriend who said to me "You've got to live with that. You have to live with the fact that you've done that." and I had never thought further than a week and a half. It was the first time that I considered that I'd have to live with having done a bad thing.
That's when Mick popped up and said "You should probably kill yourself". Even though I had tried to kill myself many times, years before, I don't consider the attempts to be suicidal. I wasn't suicidal when I was on a bridge. I was tired. And I did not want to watch my family have to go through this again.
It's quite difficult to explain why I don't think I was suicidal when I tried to kill myself, but it's because of the reasoning. I wasn't suicidal. I just didn't want to be here. And I didn't want everybody else to have to continue to watch me be here and it was four of five years after that, that Mick popped up.
I've been living with that level of being suicidal since. I don't want to die. I'm not going to kill myself. I don't want to die. I just don't want to be here. And I feel like I've got a point.
I'm a big soap fan. I understand how relentless those soap schedules and workloads are. How did you cope with that when you were in Hollyoaks?
All the time that I was in Hollyoaks, I was coming up to the middle and end of my drug addiction. I kept it a secret for quite a long time. A secret that I thought I was getting away with, but I now know, many years on, literally everyone knew and thought I was going to die. I was not that approachable back then.
I was very fortunate to have been where I was when I was there, because I made some wonderful friends at Hollyoaks, not loads, but there are people that I care about and care about me that I have in my life still and that's not the case from everywhere I've been.
The mental support that i recieved from Hollyoaks in my time there, particularly in 2011/2012, when I got there and started going to the rehabs, Bryan Kirkwood was in charge and he was one of a number of people, thanks to the time and energy they put into me, without whom, I would not be here.
It was relentless, but I was off my nut. So it was not a thing I felt very much. Anything I'd ever filmed, the decade that I was doing acting on the telly, everything I filmed, I filmed not having slept at least 24 hours before. Which is depressing.
Also, it was shit when I got sober and clean. I'd never done my job sober. I'd never done it. So yes, it was relentless, but I made it a lot harder than it needed to be. I got a lot of support there.
Leaving Hollyoaks, and this is something you mention in the documentary, made you want to become a comedian. What drove that decision?
That wasn't an immediate thing. It's because I didn't get any work. When I was in Hollyoaks, and just coming to the end of my time there, I was still drinking and I was a wanker. There are bigger wankers than me in the world, but at that time, to work with me, I wasn't rude to people, but I was a pain.
Actually, this is a perfect example of the kind of wanker I was. I remember being told that they were going to put me up for the comedy award at the Soap Awards, and I was very excited about that. But when they announced it, they'd nominated someone else. Which is how it goes, but fucking numbnuts here tweeted "Just to let you know, I'll be leaving Hollyoaks at the end of my contract."
What the fuck was I doing?! At that time in my life I was like "It's alright. I'll just go to EastEnders. You've always got a job. EastEnders will call." - but unfortunately, I realised quite quickly, that my "Of course I'm going to go and work on EastEnders" was not fucking happening. Not only that, but I didn't work at all.
I didn't work for about three or four years. I was with my ex-girlfriend and we were living in Manchester. I had no other job so I wasn't doing anything and that's when I started going into stand-up. I did one job presenting for the BBC, which I was very lucky to get and as I started to do that and learn more about being myself at work, I then started looking into doing stand-up. I'd started to plateau in my head and I thought "Lets try being me." No one else is me, so I might as well make that the thing that I am.
I've always thought, anybody's who's funny, you just talk about what you know. Unfortunately, I know what it's like to be really fucked up which is why I think I gravitated towards that as the thing I should do with my career.
As part of the documentary, you push yourself to perform a live stand-up show. I guess, the first question is why?
Yeah! What the fuck? What am I doing? Why are you making it so much worse for yourself?
Quite sincerely, I'd had the main panic attack in Norwich on the Tuesday, where I actually snuck out of the fire exit, even though the audience were in. Then on the Wednesday, I had a Zoom meeting with Tim (Hancock), the nice commissioner man at Channel 4, who had a pitch meeting at the end of the week for a fun light entertainment show, and he said "Just to let you know, I don't think they're going to go for it."
So I went "Oh, this is a shit week." and then explained what had happened and he went "Oh that's not a bad idea. Are you going to do it again?" and I said "Probably not, Tim. Not right now." and he was like "If that's something you were going to do, we could film it."
And it didn't take too long of me thinking about it on that Zoom, to realise that everything I do is safer with people looking at me. I knew how much I wanted to do this, so I said "Yeah, good idea." and they took that! It was quite a natural progression. All of it was done for the right reasons and I now know, done with the right people.
If anyone watches this documentary and can relate to any part of your lived experience, what would you say to them? Have you got any practical advice that might help others?
The part of the brain that does stuff is the other side to the part that says stuff. So you can say what you like, doing is a different matter. I find it harder and harder as the weeks go on to sincerely say things that I can stay alive for. I'm having to find a way to live without hope, because that's kind of where I'm at.
The only thing I would try and say is, the only thing that's definitely going on, is being here. If you can not kill yourself, it's definitely worth doing the thing that we've got on.
The world is in a mess. It's fucked. Nobody's really able to talk about it and I understand that. I get that we're not talking about it. And I understand why. But also, I've still got to be here because there are people that care about me more than I care about me. And so I know that I can't go anywhere.
That's not necessarily an answer to your question, but if anybody else is going through it, you might feel a bit better just once in a couple of days, weeks, hours. It's so difficult. But this is the only thing that's happening, so if you can stay for a bit, great. But if you can't. I understand.
Who do you hope is going to watch the documentary?
Fucking everyone! However long I'm alive for, I'm just going to devote all of my time to telling as many people as I can that I'm fucked. Because if that's what I've got to do and if I can do it in a way that I enjoy and is entertaining, that's fine.
Not long now until people get a chance to watch it. How are you feeling?
Pleased. Glad. It depends what day and obviously I'm not my biggest fan, but I have been watching it a lot to remind myself that this is a thing that happened and it's not shit.
I'm looking forward to people being able to see it. It's not just my name on all this stuff, and I really really hope that in it going out, I'm able to move my job on a little bit as well. I want to go out and perform for people, I want to be able to do that. I'm excited.
So we'll be seeing you on stage again?
Yeah. God yeah! But I'm not confident enough to book a whole tour, so I'm just going to book one day on stage in one theatre and if people want to come to that, and there's enough people that I can book another theatre, I'll do that. That's the plan anyway.
Lastly, thank you so much for your time and your continued honesty. I wanted to end the interview by asking you the same question you get asked towards the start of the documentary: Can you imagine feeling more hopeful about the future?
I can imagine it. I can imagine. Whether I'm able to, I'm not sure. But I can imagine a place where I'm OK. I can. But I only get there if I tell people when I'm not. But again, it depends what day you ask me. I hope that I can.
Me and The Voice in My Head airs Monday 13th May at 10pm on Channel 4
If you’re feeling emotionally distressed and need someone to talk to, you can phone the Samaritans at any time of day or night via their helpline: 116 123 (lines are open 24 hours, free and it does not appear on telephone billing) or you can email them at jo@samaritans.org, or visit samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.
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