Adam Lopez, from Mattishall, Norfolk, became a milloinaire last July but the construction worker celebrated so excessively that he was unable to walk and breathe
A lottery winner who got carried away after scooping a £1million prize said three months of partying left him “one hour away from dying”.
Adam Lopez, 39, won the National Lottery jackpot last July, but has now revealed it almost cost him his life. The construction worker was living paycheck to paycheck and had just £12.40 in his account when his fortunes dramatically changed.
Adam struck gold from a corner shop in Hellesdon, Norfolk, and he offered a staggering admission when asked how much he spent on scratchcards per week. He said: “Loads… I think over my lifetime, you are probably looking at 200 grand.”
He also said he “lost his mojo” before the lottery win and had “no passion for life”. And in another bombshell confession, he said: “About a week before the win, or a couple of weeks before the win, work was completely doing my head in. One of the lads threatened to stab me on site because I didn’t f***ing deliver his tiles within f***ing 10 minutes.”
However, last July, his bank balance went from £12.40 to £1,000,012.40 – and it was a dream come true moment for Adam. He had visualised being rich ever since he was a child where he would blow out his birthday candles and wish to be a millionaire.
But he said: “It’s nothing like I thought it was going to be growing up. Nothing like I thought it was going to be. Because when you’re younger, you are innocent as such towards people, do you know what I mean? And life in general.”
However, Adam was almost brought to tears when he acknowledged that the money “changed everything”, and described paying off his debts, providing for his mum, and buying his dream car, a blacked out Ranger Rover Sport, with his name on it.
Being an online gambler, he also claimed his bank balance skyrocketed further. He told the Anything Goes with James English podcast: “The net worth has more or less doubled, it has over doubled, like the cash net worth.
“And I was so grateful because it went to one point to £3million.”
However, from the moment he won the million, Adam claimed his inner voice stopped talking to him, and his head was filled with a refreshing silence.
He described how everything went quiet and he remembered ordering cocktails and even going into a bar and asking for a pint of the finest champagne.
“So I won the money and I just went out every day,” he said. “Every night after I won the money. I had a thing of just going out and buying bottles of champagne everywhere. We cleared pubs out left, right and centre.”
He added: “You wake up and go out for breakfast, next thing you know, it’s half 11, fancy a cheeky pint or do you know what I mean? And it was sort of that for three months.”
Despite being a self-confessed mummy’s boy, Adam said his relationship with his mum became tense, as she started fearing for his health due to his excessive boozing.
And her fears were justified, as he began to have pains in his hip which soon travelled throughout his body. Adam would wake up at night with severe calf cramps and with each day, walking became more of a struggle.
One morning, while living at his mum’s house, Adam got up and was barely able to breathe.
His mother was at work and he remembered: “I looked up at the sky and thought, ‘this might be it.’”
Adam stood up to go to the toilet and said it felt like the air had been pushed out from him.
He felt dizzy and empty, adding: “Every second that went by, I thought I was going to die. I can’t breathe. As I walked out the bathroom, I looked in the mirror briefly, I could see I was pale, white, yellow.”
Adam was too worried about his mum’s reaction to phone her, and so waited until she got home to alert her to his struggles, and he added: “I didn’t realise until I was about an hour away from hospital that I was about an hour away from dying.”
Speaking about a conversation with a nurse, he said: “She said that when you came to us, we were told you were about an hour, maybe two, from dying, and if you’d have waited any longer, you probably wouldn’t be here.”
Adam ended up being rushed to hospital after a blood clot spread to his lung and he was left fighting for life at Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital.
And speaking about what caused his bilateral pulmonary embolism, where he spent eight days in hospital where healthcare workers saved his life, he said: “It came from the lifestyle that I chose after I won the money because they lottery did not push me that way, they looked after me with everything I could ever ask for, it was my own choice.
“It was the selfishness that had come from that untouchable feeling I had growing up as a kid because everyone was nice to me. Everyone got me stuff, I was spoiled, that is where it came from.”
He also said that although he wasn’t satisfied with life before the lottery win, quitting his job straight after becoming a millionaire was ill-advised in hindsight.
Adam, who said the health scare was a much-needed wakeup call, said: “I didn’t necessarily like the life money brought to be honest with you, I lost the structure when I won the money.”
