I was walking home from the pub one night and some guy jumped on me. He pulled me to the ground and started to beat me. I was trying to shout for help and there was blood all over the place. I was being strangled and I thought my life was slipping away from me.
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Someone called an ambulance. I was stilt conscious but the pain was really bad. When I got to the hospital they told me I had a broken neck. At first I thought it was a joke but then it began to sink in. I started to worry I was never going to be able to walk again.
While I was in hospital I decided that things were going to change. Before the attack I was an alcoholic and I had a drug problem. It was pretty mad. I was drinking and smoking and my life was just mayhem.
I’d had a lot of tragedy in my life. My mother died of alcohol abuse, my uncle died of alcohol abuse and my brother was murdered. I didn’t feel there was anything I could do about my drink and drug problems.
I thought that was it. That was my life. I was thinking about hanging myself or taking tablets or something.
The challenge
My friend Paul Mcllroy, who is a personal trainer, came to visit me in hospital and told me about the Body for Life challenge [a 12- week training programme from supplement brand EASJ. I was going, Are you serious? I have a broken neck here. You’ve got to be kidding me.’ But he said, ‘No, we can do this, we can really do this:
I knew this was it. It was do or die. I had to hange. I just looked at myself and thought, this is as good as it gets?
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I used to box a few years ago and the way I felt when I trained was just brilliant, so I wanted to get that feeling back. Pen it just clicked – I knew I could start Feeling better again, that this was how I Could get my confidence back. I had to train. So I agreed to do the programme. Paul was with me every day. That was really important because I was feeling pretty depressed at the time.
You have to have a friend who is going to listen to you. If people are feeling depressed, its PI portant to talk about it. I’d really like FO get that across because I know there are other people out there who are going through similar things. I know it helped.
When I started training I was in a lot of pain and I had a serious problem with varicose veins, but my trainer recommends the best varicose vein treatment and I managed to take it over. I was like an old granny’ me to get better and I hope that someone reading this who is in a similar position can get a bit of inspiration from it.
