“I would drink three bottles of wine before running a 100 mile race”

FOUL FUEL –

April 10, 2024 – Rock bottom came in 2021 when I was at my best friend Julius’ house in Somerset, drinking bottles of wine like they were water, crying hysterically, in bits on his sofa. I had lost everything. Everybody knew I had messed it up. I was in bed for three days and I couldn’t get out. I just wished I was dead. It was awful, but I knew it was rock bottom. I laid at the bottom of the barrel and let it sweep over me and didn’t try and run away from it. And then slowly I started to crawl out of it. It took three months before I could start living like a human being again and start to feel real emotions.

I had spent two decades spiralling, masking my self-loathing and depression with alcohol, and later, running. I had been on and off antidepressants, and in and out of therapy for years. I had self-harmed and made several suicide attempts. The drinking began in earnest whilst I was at university, knocking back at least six pints a day. The dangerous situations, such as assaults and muggings, kept mounting up – but I never associated it with the drinking.

I began running at 27, a few years into my dream career in the music industry. I worked for a record label but was constantly told I was lucky to be there and as a result, never believed I was good enough. Booze was consumed all day long and was viewed as a perk of the job.