A former rugby star has revealed the moment he was forced to confront his drinking problem - at 3am.
Tom Armstrong woke one night to discover his newborn son crying in the early hours as he took his turn to give the infant a night feed.
He sleepily wandered over to the crib and saw it was 3am as he squinted through his eyelids.
Tom fed his son until the boy lulled into a sleep, when Manchester Evening News reports a sudden feeling hit him and he walked downstairs to the kitchen.
With his baby in one arm, he opened the fridge and reached for a can of beer.
He said: "I thought to myself, ‘What am I doing?’
"It was almost like an automatic response to go to the fridge because I was tired.
“I knew my main priority – my son – was in my hand and I needed to go back to sleep and start afresh tomorrow. From then on, I started to taper off everything.”
Tom had struggled with alcohol and amphetamine addiction for around nine months.
What started out as a couple of glasses of wine a night turned into a bottle every day.
The more he drank, the more he used his prescribed ADHD medication to be able to function.
But it wasn’t always this way – Tom can pinpoint exact the moment his life began to fall apart.
The 33-year-old, who recently relocated to Lytham, Lancashire, was introduced to rugby from a very young age.
He began playing as a child and progressed to academy level before turning professional.
But his career in the sport was cut short when he was 28. Tom had been experiencing pain due to having a genetically irregular-shaped femoral head – the highest part of his thigh bone.
As time went on, it became more inflamed, meaning he was unable to play rugby.
To get him back on the pitch, Tom was encouraged to have an operation.
But the operation did not go to plan and jut nine months later, he was officially retired from competitive rugby.
The worst part of it all, he claims, is that the injury could have been fixed with physiotherapy.
After the birth of his son Atlas, now aged four, his wife Danielle was visiting hospital for a routine scan when doctors discovered abnormal cells.
Hospital staff took a sample and realised it was cancer.
Tom was at the gym at the time he heard the news and months later, his relationship with his business partner broke down and he lost his half of the firm.
He said: “They saw she had a tumour.
“They took it out and she’s never had any issues since. But we had a newborn baby, I lost my rugby career and my business.
“I was sat in the oncology unit holding Atlas and I thought, ‘Oh God, my life is ending’. I think that was the trigger; that’s where nine months of self-harm started.”
Tom found himself at rock bottom, began drinking and abusing his prescribed ADHD medication and left from his hip operation, taking up to three pills a day.
He added: “No one knew I was ill all the time because I looked normal.
“No one really knew I had a problem.”
As Tom’s addiction spiralled out of control, his mental health worsened, taking him to a “dark place”.
Doctors told him he was suffering from anxiety and depression, but he thought something else was going on.
He paid for private blood tests which revealed he had Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS) also known as mould illness which often occurs after exposure to a water-damaged building.
Tom believes he contracted the condition while living in his former home.
Common cognitive complaints by patients with CIRS include memory loss, mood disorders, brain fog, loss of executive function and fatigue.
A study published in scientific journal Neuroimage showed inflammation appeared to have a negative impact on the brain’s readiness to reach and maintain an alert state something Tom was experiencing during his mental health and addiction crisis.
Tom said: “I also started getting gut issues and IBS symptoms and loads of other things,”
“When I was out of the house, within a matter of two weeks I started to feel happier again. The brain fog cleared within a matter of weeks.”
Tom vowed to turn his life around for good, came off the pills and stopped drinking.
He also began meditating, a form of self-care that became a huge part of his recovery.
Tom also launched his own business True Athletic Fitness, to help others suffering with their own health and fitness.
The service offers red light therapy, blood and gut testing and fitness plans to help others fully understand their bodies.
He added: “After finding out my own problems, I brought all those things together in a package where people can find out for themselves what is going on in their body so they can rule things out.
“I built this method to understand yourself so you have an informed choice where you can see there is a problem. I want to make sure people don’t suffer like I did.”
