A forklift operator who won £1,000,000 (that’s $1.34 million!) on a lottery scratcher regrets his decisions after being hospitalized for partying nonstop. Adam Lopez, 39, bought the winning ticket in July and has since used some of the money to go on a family vacation and buy new cars for him and his mother. But the lottery winner also admits that he has spent three months partying, which led him to be hospitalized for more than a week. While the money allowed to him to live the fast life, he now thinks he “went the wrong way about it.”
Million-dollar scratch-off winner gets a ‘massive wake-up call’
After three months of partying, Lopez was admitted to the hospital on September 10 with a bilateral pulmonary embolism and will require six to nine months of recovery.
The lottery winner said this was “a massive, massive wake-up call” in an interview with the BBC. His described his life after quitting his job as an “absolute rollercoaster” where he was “burning the candle at both ends,” though it was “enjoyable until my health became an issue.” Lopez knew that his lifestyle would have to end eventually, but it “nearly came to an end in the worst possible way.”
The issue was a blood clot in his leg that eventually spread to his lungs. He remembers being in his home unable to walk or breathe, ringing for an ambulance, and being transported to the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital. That shock made him change his perspective in life: “It doesn’t matter if you have a million, 100 million, a billion, a trillion — when you’re in the back of the ambulance, none of it matters.”
The scratch-off winner also realized that he shouldn’t have left his job as a forklift driver. “I lost the structure to my life and day to day living,” he said. “It was a complete disconnect from the life I was living.”
