Craig Bulloch is Hamilton born and bred, youngest of three boys, grew up with sport filling every weekend, his mum and dad driving them all to grounds Saturday and Sunday. After Boys High he did a gap year exchange and ended up on a fish farm in the far north of Scotland, the nearest building three or four miles away, just him and one other Kiwi. One year turned into eight. He found a cricket club by pulling a phone book out of a pub, ripping out the relevant pages, handing it back, and writing letters to each club from home. A couple replied. He chose one, played for them for seven years, and eventually played professionally in South Africa at Hermanus, south of Cape Town, where he was in the ground when Mike Atherton and Freddie Flintoff came through on a preseason tour.

He came back to Hamilton at thirty with a house and a glass pool fencing business. Then the GFC hit. Nobody was putting in pools, nobody was building balustrades. The business started going under and Craig started withdrawing. He would tell his parents he was going out with mates, tell his mates he was going around to his parents for a roast, and sit at home by himself every weekend with a bottle of red, a packet of cigarettes, and a pie. His parents eventually got him to a doctor. The doctor handed him a clipboard, looked at the answers, said clinically depressed, wrote a script for Prozac, and sent him on his way. No follow-up. Craig walked to his car and cried. He had gone in feeling like himself and come out feeling like half of that. The medication put 25 kilograms on him with nothing else changing. He hid everything from everyone. By 2010 he was suicidal. He had decided the best birthday present he could give his mother on her 60th was not being there anymore.

His brother came through the door within twenty minutes of Craig calling to cancel the birthday dinner. Just knew something was up. That was the start of it. Then John Kirwan came out publicly about his own depression, and for Craig seeing an All Black talk about that stuff was massive. He started running. A psychologist set basic goals: wake up at a normal time, make the bed, get dressed, eat meals. Structure first. Then he decided he was going to do an Iron Man to prove to himself he was well again.

It took three attempts over four years. The first year a weather bomb cancelled the race. The second attempt he had a heart attack ten days out. He had been running up Ladies Mile and did not feel right. His wife Googled it. He walked two kilometres to Middlemore to avoid paying for parking, told them the story, was put in a bed, and the people who had taken his bloods rang to say he needed to get to hospital. He was already there. Eighty per cent blockage in one artery, stent put in. Six weeks later he ran his fastest half marathon. He trained for a third year, got to the start line at Lake Taupo with 1,200 athletes in the water, and swam the 3.8k in an hour and ten minutes. When he climbed out, the person next to him was his brother, who Craig had dragged into the sport the year before. He finished in twelve hours and twenty minutes and cried on the red carpet.

Craig co-founded Mates Matter NZ after friends took their lives and he got sick of watching the conversation go nowhere. The trust runs mental health first aid training and community events, and has a Movember sports club with nearly a hundred players through the door, Lou Vincent as patron. The cricket team recently played in an interservices tournament against the NZ Defence Force. He talks through the ALEC framework: Ask, Listen, Encourage action, Check in. The key is listening to understand rather than listening to fix, and then going back to check in a couple of weeks later instead of just walking away.

Men live four years less than women on average. For Maori men it is seven. Craig opens the episode with that stat and spends the next hour on what he thinks can change it.

Listen to the full episode on all major platforms

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F19LfA47SAA

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72KnBcFkM1r3xm2YyVujJR

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shedlifenz-podcast/id1857464528

iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-shedlife-nz-308999038/