ITV journalist Tom Bradbury has opened up about a "hideous" breakdown he suffered which led to him lying on the floor outside his bedroom.
The 55-year-old appeared on Loose Women today as he spoke about his terrible struggle with insomnia which he said was "100 times worse" than being shot.
He also admitted that he feared he was "going mad", though wife Claudia helped reassure him that they would get through it.
Tom had been signed off work for three months back in 2018 as he struggled with insomnia and an increasing addiction to sleeping pills.
Panellist Ruth Langsford asked him on the ITV show: "When did you realise that something was not right?"
"I had terrible insomnia and at one stage," he explained. "I was lying on the floor outside our bedroom with my wife lying on the floor beside me towards the door saying, 'It's going to be alright. I don't know what's happening but we're going to get you through this.'
"I was in just such a hideous mess - I didn't know what was happening."
Ruth quizzed him: "You couldn't sleep at all?"
"It had been happening for a while," he explained. "One of the things when you have a breakdown is you think, 'What happened? I just fell off a cliff.' And then you realise you didn't and you've been sliding for a long time.
"But the sort of acute period was incredibly bad - I couldn't sleep, I took a sleeping pill because I had to and then I thought, 'I'm getting addicted to the sleeping pills, I mustn't take them' and then I couldn't sleep at all for a night.
"I talked before [about how] I got shot in Jakarta in 1999 and that was bad and very painful but this was 100 times worse. I thought I was going mad."
*Loose Woman airs weekdays at 12.30pm on ITV
