In a bid to raise awareness for Mental health Week, Adam sat down with Lorraine to reveal how he developed an eating disorder in his teens.
He said: “For me it hit crisis point when I was 15 and I got a rugby injury because I was at a school which was very traditional, rugby and academic and if I’m honest looking back now, the problem started much younger because I never felt like I fitted into that environment.
“I kind of felt even at the age of 10 or 11 that my life was predestined, I was going to go to public school, go to university, become a lawyer, have 2.4 children and retire and play golf at 50 and that just isn’t what I wanted to do, I wanted to go and be an actor.
“So I was at this boarding school I never felt like I fit in but the rugby boys were the gods of the school so I trained and trained and trained to be a rugby player and then dislocated both my shoulders and it meant I couldn’t do [it].”
Following his injury, Adam couldn’t train and told Lorraine that he started bingeing and purging as a way of distracting himself: “I was eating to try and keep my weight up so I could get back training and literally, I’d just without realising, been eating and eating and eating for two hours stood up and was just sick on the spot.
“Now whereas most people would be ‘Oh my God I’ve been sick it’s terrible’ I looked at my watch and went ‘I’ve just not had to think for two hours’ so I did it straight again and it started out as a way of distracting my brain…
“But the problem once you get on that destructive road, it just snowballs and snowballs and snowballs and by the end of it, 18 months later, I was setting my alarm for six o’clock in the morning so I could start eating and bingeing and I was throwing up up to 30 times a day.”
"People think you’re in denial you know from the first second whether it’s drink, drugs, depression or eating disorders, you know from the first second that you’re on the path but the problem is you’re so embarrassed"
Of his problem, Adam said: “It becomes so secret… People think you’re in denial you know from the first second whether it’s drink, drugs, depression or eating disorders, you know from the first second that you’re on the path but the problem is you’re so embarrassed.
“I was so embarrassed because I had no reason to be feeling like this so it was even worse because I knew I was punishing my parents and I knew everyone knew as well and that was the worst thing.”
Adam, all too aware of how mental health issues can affect anyone, added: “I’m an everyday guy and yet it happened to me and it can literally happen to anyone.”
Speaking about his recovery, the soapstar - who played Nick Tilsey in ITV’s Corrie - said: “Even if I was doing something like Coronation Street it’s this big successful TV show, I wasn’t happy.
“Literally for 12 years of acting I never actually enjoyed one part of it because I was so worried about what the next step was.”
He continued: “It was on my 30th birthday that I knew I was cured because my mum rang me when I was working in New Zealand and said ‘what are you doing for your birthday?’ and I said ‘I’m just reading a book’ and I burst into tears because it was the first time since I was 12 that I’d been able to be in my own company because up to that point I had to distract myself all the time.”
Adam - who married Good Morning Britain correspondent, Katy Rickitt (nee Fawcett) last year, finished: “It was part of me and who I was and to me the reward for getting through that was meeting Katy.”
Lorraine is on ITV, weekdays from from 8.30am to 9.25am