I spent entire days-on-end just lying in bed. It’s not that I didn’t wanna get up and get stuff done, it’s that I couldn’t. It’s impossible to explain to someone what that feels like unless you’ve been through it. My whole world consisted of a messy room and a bottomless jar of peanut butter.

When I found The Royal, I was fighting for my survival. They diagnosed me with what’s called difficult-to-treat depression. This explains why nothing worked. Ever. Why I could do one thing one day and achieve results, but it wouldn’t work the next.

The career I loved had vanished. My identity: the person I knew I was and had been so proud of, was dead. I was consumed with dealing with my symptoms. I couldn’t feel the way I used to. I couldn’t leave my home, let alone be the father I wanted to be or the husband my wife deserved. I might as well not have come home at all, because I had become a burden to my wife and children.