LAKE: I HIT ROCK BOTTOM

HEARTBREAK over the collapse of his marriage and grief over his mother’s terminal illness triggered Brian Lake’s destructive booze bender in Japan.

The three-time premiership champion and Norm Smith medallist for Hawthorn (pictured) admits he hit “rock bottom” when trying to run from the toughest time of his life.

Lake has revealed that, two days after he exited Australian Survivor, his wife said they needed a “break”.

Faced with the breakdown of the relationship with the mother of his three children and his own mum’s deteriorating health, Lake said he fled to Bali, and then Japan.

Choking back tears, he told News Corp: “You probably should deal with your issues but, I decided, to an extent, to run away from them. I couldn’t handle it.

“If you’re not in the right headspace when you’re drinking then it’s amazing when you have a few, that bad things can happen.”

A late-night brawl in Osaka in July after a phone argument with his estranged wife resulted in Lake being put in solitary confinement in a police cell.

At breaking point after six gruelling days of contemplation, he was released and returned to his Caroline Springs home, only for his beloved mother to die after long battle with cancer.

“You look at life and you think, s---, it’s not panning out the way that you expected,” Lake said.

“But you’ve got kids and no matter how bad life gets, you’ve got other people around you.”

ALICE COSTER