Our guest this month is Liverpool writer, storyteller and recovery worker PJ Smith — also known through his writing and performances as Roy.

PJ was a talented young footballer who signed for Everton, but as his home life became less stable, football, school and eventually any sense of direction began to slip away.

By his late teens, alcohol and drugs had replaced football as a way of finding confidence, connection and identity. What followed was a decade PJ describes as repetitive, chaotic and increasingly hopeless.

In 2007, with his life reduced to getting through each day and the possibility of suicide becoming very real, PJ finally asked for help.

During treatment, he was asked to write his life story. A member of staff told him he could write and that he should nurture it. A few weeks later, a slightly dishonest attempt to get an afternoon away from rehab led him to an open audition in front of playwright Willy Russell and another person telling him to keep writing.

He did.

PJ’s first collection, Algorithm Party, introduced Roy: part character, part alter ego and part collection of the men, voices and contradictions PJ had grown up around.

His new book, Boomerang Process, returns to those lives and asks what happened next.

We talk about growing up anxious, his father’s absence, football and belonging, addiction, recovery, creativity and the uncomfortable period when an old identity has disappeared but a new one has not yet formed.

PJ also tells us about his work at Damien John Kelly House, a recovery living centre in Liverpool where men rebuild their lives through honesty and accountability, but also through football, cycling, books, art, music and community.

This is a conversation about wasted potential, second chances and why recovery has to become about far more than simply not drinking or using drugs.

It’s also about what makes a good man: consistency, honesty, responsibility and being prepared to live by the things you ask of others.

PJ’s work

Buy Boomerang Process
https://www.tncbooks.co.uk/store/p/boomerang-process-by-roy

Find out more about Algorithm Party
https://roughtradebooks.com/pages/authors

Damien John Kelly House
https://hubofhope.co.uk/service/835359ba-59f3-42d5-badd-53be0754d932

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