‘I was coaching people yet taking cocaine alone’

It was Frank’s idea for Nathan to join the programme, he says, and the pair went on to become business partners and fulfil the dream Nathan shared with his brother Darren – a former professional boxer – to open a gym.

“Sometimes it’s about who can help you and how can you do better – and it’s okay to ask for help.”

In 2019, Empire Gym opened at Salterbeck, in Workington.

“We’d started running our own coaching programme called Empire State of Mind, helping people set goals and take part in challenges, and I thought ‘why would people listen to me when I’m not leading by example, I’m a fraud’.

“You’re always good at letting yourself down, but you don’t want to be letting other people down.

“My very first goal for drinking was just stop for 90 days – a quarter of a year- but really it was one day at a time.”

The period around Christmas 2020 was the last time Nathan took drugs and 3 January 2021 was the last time he touched alcohol.

It was that year he was able to leave his job as a steel fabricator at West Cumberland Engineering and go full time with his work at the gym, which now has 900 members.