'I thought I was dying after crash, I asked people to put me down'
Biker Donal was hit head on at 60mph when a driver pulled a U-turn on a busy A road
A biker has recalled the moment he asked to die after being hit at 60mph by an elderly driver who pulled a U-turn on a busy A-road. Donal Bourke, 40, was left 'shattered' in the crash.
He said: “I remember the moment I thought I was dead. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. I was just lying in a bush, my body completely shattered. A woman saw me, took one look and burst into tears. I asked the people around me to kill me. I genuinely thought that was it.
“I hit the front end and was catapulted through the air. I remember tumbling and tumbling. It felt like it would never end. When I came to, I was in a hedge, unable to breathe, my chest crushed, my body screaming in pain. I couldn’t lift my head, but I could feel blood running down my leg. I genuinely thought I was dying. I asked people to put me down. That’s how bad it was.”
He was rushed to hospital where he spent 12 days in a coma. The crash in 2014 left Donal, from Oxford, with 30 separate injuries, 13 surgeries, and a leg so badly mangled the flesh was torn clean off. “The bike was literally covered in bits of me,” he says.
“The spinal surgeon who operated on me was a biker himself. He turned up in his leathers and said, ‘I’ve been called in to do your back.’ That’s when I found out I'd broken four vertebrae.” Doctors rebuilt his leg using muscles from his back and ribs, alongside extensive skin grafts.
“They took my lat and serratus muscles to reconstruct my leg. It still looks like a butcher’s slab, but it works.”
Even after Donal, who was working in marketing at the time, was discharged, he couldn’t walk more than a few hundred yards and had to move into his parents’ living room, where a hospital bed was installed. “I was trying to be positive. But once the gratitude of surviving wore off the depression and PTSD really set in.”
As the physical pain persisted and the psychological trauma deepened, Donal turned to alcohol to cope. “I couldn’t sleep. The insomnia was almost worse than the injuries. So I started drinking a bottle of whisky a night, just to knock myself out.”
What began as self-medication soon spiralled into dependency. Isolated, anxious and traumatised, Donal became a recluse, reluctant to see friends or even leave the house. He suffered brutal nightmares and would wake up screaming. The drinking numbed the pain but also eroded any sense of hope.
“I’d basically given up on myself,” he says. “I didn’t care what happened to me. I was in self-destruct mode.
“I remember one day I couldn’t change a lightbulb. My shoulder muscles were gone and taken to rebuild my leg. I broke down, jumped in my car and drove to Beachy Head. I just cried and cried. I very nearly did something stupid.”
On another occasion, Donal was on the M25 when it all became too much. “I took my seatbelt off. I thought about it. But again, I didn’t. I turned around,” he says.
Scared by his brush with suicide, Donal started to open up about how he was feeling. Then a friend dropped around with a bottle of CBD oil, which he recommended trying. “I was mega dubious. I had a drawer full of pills and morphine, and none of them worked. But I tried it. That night, I had the best sleep since the accident. I woke up with a spring in my step for the first time in years.”
Donal ditched morphine within weeks. “People say it’s hard to come off. For me, it wasn’t. I just didn’t want it anymore. CBD worked in a way nothing else had. The only thing harder was quitting drinking. But that happened naturally once I started healing.”
Disappointed by the weak, ‘isolate’ oils on high street shelves, he began sourcing potent, full-spectrum CBD from abroad and eventually launched Mindful Extracts, offering CBD oils and wellness products inspired by his own recovery.
He said: "The quality changed my life, and I wanted to give that to others.”
He also tried other holistic therapies, including yoga, EMDR, CBT, bodywork, meditation, breathwork, even Zen Buddhist retreats. And he started meditating. At first, it felt weird as in ‘Is this some kind of hypnotism?’ But then the benefits started flowing.
“A 20-minute body scan calmed me more than a handful of pills ever could.” Eventually, he committed to regular Zen meditation. He’s now completed 15 residential retreats, sitting ten to twelve hours a day cross-legged on a hard wooden floor, remarkably without difficulty.
“It’s intense but it pulls up trauma and teaches you to let it go. I’ve processed memories I didn’t even know I had. Pain, too. I used to feel blood dripping down my leg where there was none. Now, I’ve changed my relationship with pain entirely.”
Today, Donal is unrecognisable from the man who sobbed in his car at Beachy Head. “I don’t have PTSD anymore. I’ve got no daily anxiety. My stress levels are the lowest they’ve ever been. I’ve rebuilt myself through nature, through mindfulness and through cannabis oil. It saved my life. No question,” he says.
“We need to get this message to the blokes who don’t talk. The Guinness-swilling rugby fans who think yoga is for hippies. I was that guy. And I nearly died because I didn’t know how to cope. People need to know there is another way. You're not doomed to a life of pain.”
If you need to talk, you can call the Samaritans for free on 116 123 or visit www.samaritans.org.