“My final message to you is: whatever your personal battle, be brave and face it.”
- The late Rob Burrow
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IF there’s an abiding image of Joe Diver the footballer, it is of his winning score against Monaghan in the Ulster Championship of 2009.
The score itself was the outline. Off-the-shoulder, limbs going everywhere, bulldozing up the middle. They didn’t all clear the black spot like this one but that was part of the wild allure that drew the crowd towards him.
But it was the celebration that coloured the picture in. Wheeling straight for the terrace in Celtic Park, knees and fists pumping for far longer than necessary.
That was who he seemed to be. All energy, all action, an anarchic wrecking ball.
Fearless.
The little we knew.
The real anarchy was off the field.
Football was the steel beam that had kept his life upright.
When Brian McIver took over from John Brennan at the end of 2012, the call never came to come back that winter.
Just turned 30, his inter-county career was over.
On March 6 this year, Diver turned 42. Cake, candles, the usual for a father-of-four.
But on August 25, he will celebrate his other birthday. No cake, no candles, no fuss.
This year that date will mark 11 years since he took his last drink.
“I celebrate it quietly to myself. It’s more important than my actual birthday. It’s a very important date in my life.
“When it’s coming up to it, I would do a lot of reflecting and I know it’s coming, and it’s a positive thing.
“It’s when things really started to turn around.”
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HE kept the pledge. Didn’t even break it on his 18th birthday. A bit of time passed after that before he tasted his first alcohol.
That very first night, what he found was that it took away the fear he’d grown up riddled with.
“When I was a young lad I had a lot of fear.
“Fear of making a mistake, fear of getting things wrong, and I was always very careful.
“Always had a fear of failure. Fear of not passing exams. Fear of not getting into the big school. Fear of not being smart enough.
“This was at 10, 11, 12 years of age. I always had ‘the fear’. Alcohol really took away my fears.”
He was “23 or 24″ before it progressed into anything more. Nights out turned into whole weekends.
But football was the same pole of the other magnet. As long as he had it, he had structure. A place to be where he had no fear.
“I was never afraid playing football. I would say I was nearly over-confident. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
“For those moments in time when I was playing football and training really well, training hard, training heavy, my fear was gone and that was like a drink for me. I got a thrill out of that.
“It was only when I got back home. Did you ever see the guy peeling the face down, the zip, on TV? That’s how I would describe me.
“I was great whenever I was around the lads and different people. Whenever I got home and was by myself, that’s when the fear came back into my life. It made me very anxious, it got me down.
“I would have been the life and soul of the party and then by myself, I really struggled.
“It was a very uncomfortable feeling. I just didn’t like it.
“In a way, drink was a solution. Football was a solution.
“Being around other footballers and the team and the craic was a solution because it got me away from me. I got out of my head and for me that was freedom.
“It was when I was by myself I felt trapped again.”
Derry reached the Ulster final in 2011 but were beaten by Donegal. A year later they got ripped apart in Ballybofey, the beginning of the end for John Brennan and consequently Diver himself.
His inter-county career ended in the summer of 2012.
A little over a year later, he checked in to the Cuan Mhuire rehabilitation centre for treatment.
From March 2013 until August that year, things had unravelled.
On top of an increasing dependence on alcohol, which had become a day-and-daily feature, he had become addicted to diazepam having been prescribed it to help with his low mood.
It was a dark path he found himself on. Left a lot of destruction.
And then on August 25, 2013, he turned the corner.
“My last drink was still in a glass, believe it or not. Red wine. I remember putting it down going ‘that’s it. No more. I’m gonna go and get help’…
“I didn’t know at the time but they say in alcoholism it is about making a decision. I do believe I made a decision.”
He phoned for an ambulance that took him to Antrim hospital.
Three days later, he checked in at Cuan Mhuire.
“I went to this place and absolutely hated it. Hated it. I thought I was too good for it. I shouldn’t be here.”
For the first two weeks, he climbed the walls. Mind and body struggled to adapt.
One afternoon, he was standing at a window inside, looking out on a glorious day. Mid-20s, the heat rising off the road.
“There’s this wee man, I don’t know what age he was. But I was never so jealous of a man in my life.
“This man was out riding his bike, the sun blazing. Perfect day.
“I was stuck staring out this window, shaking, thinking to myself ‘I would love to be him’.
“That’s a very vivid memory for me, how jealous I was of this person.”
In the small en-suite bathroom he shared with his room-mate, Diver finally broke down one afternoon.
Cried a river of tears into the sink for a full hour.
“I hadn’t cried in years. I mean I was dripping with tears, they were literally running into the sink.
“It was as if the whole build-up over the years, all those stresses and strains, came out of me at once. Something changed in me that day, my outlook.
“In recovery they talk about a significant change in a person, almost a spiritual experience. It isn’t this kind of God coming down from the skies and a beam of light, that’s not what we’re talking about.
“My attitude went from I shouldn’t be here, I’m too good for this place, I’m better than all these people to started getting my feelings back. My real feelings, which was ok, I’m here, what am I gonna do about it?
“It was as if all the toxic stuff had gone and it felt like it was me again. It felt like it was the real me that came back.”
The medical professionals in the centre talked a lot about ‘stinking thinking’. Negative energy. He could see that in himself.
Like most alcoholics, he was an over-thinker with a racing brain.
Joe discovered of himself that he’s a person of extreme nature - everything is really good or really bad and nothing in-between.
“If I’m celebrating, it’s a real celebration. If I’m feeling down, I’m really down. If I’m in love, I’m really in love. If I hate someone, I really hate them. There’s no middleground.
“The big problem is selfishness. Alcoholism, they reckon, is because of an extreme selfishness in nature in a person. I would have gave you the shirt off my back but it’s selfishness in terms of I’m always thinking about myself, my own fears, my own concerns, my own problems.
“You might call it a self-centred fear. The solution, in many ways, is to start caring about other people and wondering how this person or that person feels.”
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ALL those thoughts making their way to the fore were good thoughts, even if it took time to realise it.
The thirst for living was beginning to return.
By the time he left Cuan Mhuire after 12 weeks, he almost didn’t want to go.
It’s only a beginning at that stage.
“They tell you about two to five per cent – and five per cent is generous – of people recover.”
A bad bout of depression struck in 2018 when he was coming up to five years sober.
He had built the milestone up in his head, that if he got to five years he might be cured for good. It just doesn’t work that way.
Part of the recovery is learning to deal with those emotions. Talking it out, being open, vulnerable.
He feels very vulnerable right now, sat at the island in his kitchen early on a Friday afternoon.
Not many people even around home would be aware of his story. He’s never spoken about it publically.
On Saturday, he will get up in front of a hall of his own when Bellaghy GAC hosts an event called ‘Choices’ at which Joe and former Dublin star Philly McMahon will speak about drug addiction and awareness.
Through the vulnerability, he feels as though he’s come to the stage of his journey where he’s ready to open up and offer his hand to other people.
He was driving home last week and saw somebody throwing a half bottle in the bin at half 11 in the morning.
“It’s out there and you do see it. Those are all wee nudges to go ‘not today’…Not today. One day at a time.”
The kids are all at school. Three girls and a boy.
His wife Micaela, a former NI netball player who played in the 2011 World Cup, stood by him.
She encouraged him to seek help. It was Joe’s brother who rang Cuan Mhuire to get him in there while he was in Antrim Hospital.
“It’s very likely that my family saved me from further destruction.”
Micaela also encouraged him to go down the professional path on which he now finds himself.
It was around that time in 2018 that they were talking idly one afternoon in the kitchen.
Micaela asked Joe what he really wanted to do in life.
He was working in the corporate sector. A good lifestyle, but unfulfilled.
Having been in Cuan Mhuire, he became interested in the idea of counselling.
So he volunteered with the Samaritans for six months, answered phones, talked to people.
“I found that I was good at it, and I felt good about it.”
They were in the process of building a house and added plans for a counselling studio above the garage, out of where he now operates his own business having done a foundation degree in counselling practice with Ulster University.
Even now, he still regularly attends AA meetings.
“When I go to AA, I’m surrounding myself with other alcoholics that think like me, sound like me.
“Going into an AA meeting is hope, not the opposite. It’s not the ‘life’s over’ stuff. It’s looking at that guy who’s sober for 20 years or the girl who’s done really well, she’s three years sober. So much wisdom.
“The people I’ve met in AA are unbelievable people. Some of the greatest people I’ve ever met. People that have been to hell and back. There’s a real life experience and wisdom that comes with that.
“You can really learn from them if you listen to them. They know what they’re talking about. They’ve been there and done it.
“And you can be that when someone new comes in, and that’s how it works.”
He togged out for a couple of games with Bellaghy Thirds this year but his primary vice these days is CrossFit.
That’s the day and daily now, hopping over the River Bann into Toome or else out in the garage at home.
When he had been in Cuan Mhuire for a few days, he started to rail against the place, asking where all the professional help was.
What Joe Diver had yet to grasp was this place was like the biblical tale of the drowning man, who turned away a truck and a boat and a helicopter insisting that God was coming to save him. And when he drowned, God said to him I sent you a car, a boat and a helicopter, what more did you want?
The trucks and the boats and the helicopters in Cuan Mhuire or AA are not the people with name badges. It’s the ones that don’t.
“They said to me ‘Joe, it’s the other people in here that will get you well’. And my attitude was ‘ach c’mon, are you serious?’
“I was judging people down there. But they told me those people would get me well and they weren’t wrong. They did.
“I spent 12 solid weeks with other alcoholics and they got me well. They got me into that place of peace.
“When you’re in the trenches, the people around you will get you through it. Like football, when you’re getting hammered at half-time, that’s where you are, the trenches. And these people around you will get you out.
“They’re saving my life. That’s what it feels like. The bond you have with these other people in addiction, that they are literally saving my life, is incredible. It’s a real powerful human connection.
“When a newcomer comes into the room, they’re in the trenches, fighting for their lives.
“They surround themselves with other people who have been through it and they start getting better.”
Rob Burrow’s final message struck a real chord.
The night Joe Diver left down that glass of red wine 11 years ago, he made the choice to be brave and face his battle.
It will never end. He just has to keep on fighting it. That’s the reality.
But this is day 3,959 without a drink or a diazepam passing his lips.
There’s plenty to be proud of in that one sentence alone.
* Bellaghy GAC will host an open invitation event with former Dublin star and BBC pundit Philly McMahon, and their own Joe Diver this Saturday at 2pm in their social club. Philly will raise awareness and highlight resources to support drug and alcohol addiction in the community and Joe will contribute his own experience and insight. Attendance is free and open to all.
