Louis Theroux has shared a touching selfie with one of the people who appeared in his documentary on alcohol addiction.
Joe, was in a bad way the first time Theroux met him: sat in a hospital ward, his hair dishevelled and completely wasted.
But now, months later, Joe is on the mend.
In a tweet that has touched the hearts of thousands of fans, Theroux shared an update on Joe, who is eight months sober and looking better than ever.
Theroux's tweet, which was shared on Tuesday evening, has since garnered almost 20,000 favourites and has been retweeted more than 4,000 times.
He took the opportunity to congratulate Joe on his sobriety and slyly pointed out that they were rocking some epic facial hair.
Joe starred in Theroux's 'Drinking To Oblivion' documentary which aired back in April.
Throughout the programme's filming, Theroux watched Joe go from one extreme to the other: from homelessness and drinking numerous bottles of vodka a day, to sober and trying to get his life back on track.
One time, Joe was hospitalised after drinking so much vodka that he developed ataxia, a term for a group of disorders that affect co-ordination, balance and speech.
In hospital, he told Theroux: “I feel pretty scared to be honest. My legs, they’re feeling weak. That’s never happened before and it’s quite frightening.”
Joe said at the time that he turned to the bottle after going through a break-up and not landing the job he wanted.
The double dose of rejection was enough to tip him over the edge and he began to consume between one and two bottles of vodka every day, for two months.
“I think I collapsed in the street and a stranger must’ve thought, ‘you need to go to A&E’,” he told Theroux. “I was drinking myself to death, but I didn’t want to die.”
On a sober day, when Theroux caught up with Joe, he mentioned that it was scary how quickly things could spiral out of control.
Soon afterwards, he was back in hospital again, inebriated. He had been kicked out of his flat, had temporarily lived on the streets and his mental health had suffered severely.
Things have since turned around for Joe, who has moved to Brighton to live with his dad.
He said the motivation to give up drinking could never come from his friends or family, but had to come from himself, when he was in a place where he was “about to lose everything”.
“I was completely crazy,” he said. “I felt off kilter and anxious and like everything was either going at 100mph or wasn’t going quick enough. But now I just feel okay, which is nice.”
We're glad to see he's still going strong. Well done, Joe!
