So here’s a fun life experiment: go to sleep with £12.40 in your account and wake up with £1,000,012.40. Adam Lopez, 39, did exactly that thanks to a National Lottery scratch-off. One minute he’s driving a forklift; the next he’s throwing keys to a Range Rover Sport (and an Evoque for Mum, because you don’t forget the woman who taught you to parallel park and tolerate your decisions).

Cue the montage: Barbados trip, first-class daydreams, “pinch me” quotes, generous budgets for fun and family, the whole champagne-and-confetti template. Adam even framed the win like a nudge from his late dad—poignant, human, grounded.

And then life did what life does when you think you’ve hacked it: it punched back.

Two months into the victory lap, Adam landed in an ambulance with bilateral pulmonary embolism—blood clots in both lungs. Eight and a half days in Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital. No confetti. No Range Rover smell. Just sirens, fear, and the sort of clarity you can’t buy, not even with a million quid.

“It was a massive, massive wake-up call.”

The party had been “an absolute rollercoaster”—three months of burning both ends of the candle and then the table it sat on. A clot in his leg, then his lungs. Couldn’t walk. Couldn’t breathe. Suddenly, the zeros in your bank account don’t matter. The only number that matters is your oxygen saturation.

Adam’s gratitude for the hospital staff was the kind that sticks. He called them angels. Because that’s what people who keep you alive tend to look like in the rear-view mirror of hindsight.

Also: regret has amazing 20/20 vision. If he could redo one thing, he wouldn’t have quit his job. Turns out, money solves a lot, but it does not solve structure—the boring scaffolding of meaning that keeps your days from dissolving into one long bottomless brunch.

So, where’s he at now? Six to nine months of recovery. Fewer all-nighters, more actual nights of sleep. Less “live like there’s no tomorrow,” more “make sure there actually is a tomorrow.” He wants to get “back to the full version of me.” Which is the plot twist most lottery ads forget: sometimes the upgrade is not the car, it’s the discipline.

The Not-So-Sexy Lessons

• Money amplifies who you are; it doesn’t parent you. If you’re chaotic at £12.40, you’ll be deluxe chaotic at £1,000,012.40.
• Routine is underrated. Quitting your job can also mean quitting your identity. Keep the scaffolding; upgrade the view.
• Health is the only non-fungible asset. In the back of an ambulance, your net worth is precisely zero influence on your outcome.
• Celebrate like an adult. Joy doesn’t require self-destruction. First-class can include bedtime.

Congrats on the miracle, Adam. And congrats on the second one: the wake-up call you actually answered.