“Dad, are you poorly?”

“Yeah mate, I think I’ve caught that bug you had last week.”

I wasn’t poorly.
I was hungover.

The night before, I’d drunk a bottle of gin. I was bent over on the floor beside my bed, being sick onto the carpet, when my five-year-old walked in and saw me.

There was no shouting. No drama.
Just his voice — and me realising I’d crossed a line I never meant to cross.

That wasn’t a turning point.
It was a quiet moment of shame that stayed with me long after the hangover passed.

A few weeks earlier, I thought I had everything where it was supposed to be.
A wife, a child, a job, a home we were proud of. Life felt settled. Ordinary. Safe.

And then it wasn’t.

Within a month, my marriage ended. The house went on the market. The future I thought I was building disappeared almost overnight.

I remember feeling shocked more than anything else. Disoriented. Like I’d been dropped into a life I didn’t recognise, with no map for how to move through it.

Suddenly, all I had left were debts, memories, and long, quiet moments where I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next.

After everything fell apart, I didn’t handle it well at first.

I went down a path that looked fine from the outside but was quietly destructive. Drinking too much. Avoiding hard conversations. Pretending I was coping when I wasn’t. Telling myself I just needed to “get through it”, while slowly making things harder for myself and the people around me.

None of it happened overnight.
That’s the dangerous part.

It was a series of small choices made when I was tired, hurt, and didn’t have anywhere honest to put what I was carrying.

Eventually, I realised I was heading somewhere I didn’t want to be — as a dad, as a man, and as an example to my kids. Turning things around wasn’t dramatic. There was no Rocky montage. It was uncomfortable, slow, and required more honesty than I was used to giving myself.

This project exists because I know how easy it is to drift into self-destruction without realising that’s what you’re doing.

I don’t believe men need fixing.
But I do believe a lot of damage happens in isolation — when there’s no space to talk things through and no one reminding you that better choices are still available.

If this helps someone recognise those patterns earlier than I did, avoid a few of the mistakes I made, and take some steadier steps forward — then it’s doing exactly what it’s meant to do.

This isn’t about becoming someone new.
It’s about finding your footing again.