Around The Fire: Goodrays’ Eoin Keenan

Goodrays’ founder, all-knowing CBD enthuser and intrepid explorer. Eoin Keenan has been on one heck of a journey, with over a decade of field notes devoted to the humble hemp plant. Travelling across two continents to find the most effective, highest quality ingredients for that signature Goodrays blend.

This season, we’re all for taking the slow road, escaping outside for an hour, minute even—all well worth. In mellow pursuit of calm and clarity in a busy ol’ world… That’s why we’ve teamed up with the laidback folk at @goodrays to give away an epic Nowhere Bound bundle including:

- A £1k Passenger gift card

- 1 year’s supply of Goodrays

Competition closes on Monday 11th November 2024 at midnight (GMT)

Passport well stamped and slightly dog-eared, Eoin has a thing or two to say on the subject of meaningful escapism—how it’s influenced his life, his work, and perspective on both. Past struggles with anxiety led him on a path to finding an all-natural remedy, from the rolling foothills of California, British Columbia, and Colorado. Cameos include a 1988 Ford Explorer, outlaw growers and talk of the ‘Emerald’ triangle… quite the trip.

"I was born and raised in the city, but my mum used to take us out to County Donegal in Ireland, which is one of the most rural places in Europe and one of the least densely populated places across the UK and Ireland.

"That’s where her family was from. They grew up on little self-sustaining farms in the hills overlooking the Atlantic, which battered the coast night and day. It was rough, wind-swept, rainy and grey but something about those trips really stuck with me. The long empty roads, the idea of living off the land and sea and how the natural world dictated the lifestyle."

"Ever since then, I’ve always been drawn to the idea of the ‘road’, whether that’s on land or sea. I never really viewed the idea of travelling as a luxury experience but more of an opportunity to see something different, learn something new and feel and experience something you can’t in day-to-day life.

"When I was 22 I moved to Canada and the US, working on hemp farms and living out the back of a 1988 Ford Explorer, and exploring the country between harvests, and I’ve rarely been happier. It started as a bit of a journey of curiosity but I managed to come away from it with a job and I feel extremely grateful for that."

"I’ve experienced anxiety from a relatively young age. Anyone who has gone through that will know, it can stop you from living your ‘best life’. I knew that I had to sort out my mental wellbeing, but I wasn’t really sure where to begin, the whole ‘wellness’ space felt a little bit inaccessible for me.

"Instead, I wanted to understand if diet, exercise and elements of the natural world could help. This is when I found CBD, a non-psychoactive compound from the world’s oldest and most misunderstood plant. After a few weeks, I was getting a good night's sleep, waking up with energy, and feeling creative, with an overriding sense of clarity and calm that helped me to get the best out of every day." 

"I’ve spent most of my adult life studying the hemp plant, travelling across the US, Canada, Europe and North Africa to find the most effective, highest-quality ingredients, from sustainable sources.

"Launching Goodrays, we use those decades of experience and borderline obsession to create the country’s most effective CBD brand and to help the food and drink industry prioritise mental wellbeing. For too long, this industry has been dominated by hard alcohol, high sugar and ultra-processed food and it’s high time we changed that."

"To be honest, I went into the whole experience in 2012 with little expectations but it’s been an amazing journey. At first, it helped me sleep better. I was getting to sleep quicker and staying asleep longer, feeling a lot fresher in the morning without regular nightly disruptions and tossing and turning. After a few weeks, I was noticing that I was feeling a lot less stressed and anxious both physically and mentally. My body was just dealing with day-to-day stress so much better."

"When I started to look into the research and the preclinical evidence I was beginning to understand how much to take (25-30mg), how regularly to take it (daily) and how it worked. Essentially every human body has a natural ‘cannabinoid system’, which controls many of the vital functions of the body; the nervous system, digestive system, inflammation system etc. CBD helps to supplement this system and ensures all the connections flow more seamlessly, resulting in reduced stress and better sleep.

"When I started Goodrays, I wanted the brand to really take people on this journey and help educate them on how everything works. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was trying to create the brand I would’ve wanted and needed back in 2012, before there was such a thing as CBD ‘brands’."

"In my last year at University, I did a dissertation on CBD and why it should be legalised so pretty much immediately after I’d handed it in, I jumped on a plane to California. When I arrived, I was scratching an itch but by the time I left, I was convinced this was my one passion project.

"I landed in San Francisco initially, found a cheap motel and picked up a Ford Explorer with over 300,000 miles on it because it was the cheapest car I could find in the city. The next day, I put up some curtains in the back, built in a makeshift bed and I drove about five hours North to see if someone would let an unemployed Irish student cut crops and ask questions all day in a place called the Emerald Triangle.

"For those that have been, it’s a place they don’t forget. Imagine rolling hills of cannabis and hemp crops grown by families of self-determined ‘outlaws’, many of whom had arrived in the 60s in search of a counterculture. Most of the people there lived out of tents, vans or wooden sheds when they arrived surrounded by some of the world’s oldest redwood trees but they built the world’s best and most knowledgeable community of cultivators and innovators in hemp and cannabis.

"Those growers taught me to cultivate, cure and judge the quality of cannabis and hemp and about the medicinal effects, the culture and the environmental benefits of the plant. Essentially, they mapped out our supply chain, our innovation pipeline and you can see that the West Coast culture is a huge part of the brand. We wouldn’t be where we are today without them.

"In between those harvests, I had the chance to go and explore the country, the Rocky Mountains, The Pacific Highway and we also managed to pick up a secondhand boat for $500 and circumnavigate Vancouver Island by sea.

"It's by far the most influential and important trip of my life."

Goodrays exists to ‘help busy minds find calm and clarity’. The fridge at Passenger HQ is kept well stocked for this reason, sharpening minds, dropping shoulders and restoring the office ambience to equal parts productive / mellow. Good times had, work gets done.