I’m one in every of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’s greatest ever losers – it left me sobbing and I even collapsed on the street, however the lesson I discovered remodeled my life

A former Who Wants To Be A Millionaire contestant, who was one of the show’s biggest losers, has reflected on how their huge loss impacted their life.

Justin Peters appeared on the US version of the iconic gameshow back in 2015 and was initially hopeful of bagging a massive fortune – but his dreams came crashing down when he lost a whopping $225,000.

In a first-person article for Slate, Justin told how he knew he’d made the ‘biggest mistake of my life’ within seconds of giving the wrong answer to host Terry Crews.

Reflecting on that horrific moment, Justin wrote that he thought it was a ‘fake-out’, that host Terry was just pulling his leg and would then reveal that he’s won big.

But it wasn’t. Instead of bagging half a million dollars, his winnings plummeted down to just $25,000,  leaving Justin devastated.

The $500,000 question read: ‘Drinking alcohol in the British House of Commons is strictly forbidden at all times, with the single exception of a lawmaker doing what?’

Justin said he immediately eliminated half of the choices, which was ‘declaring war’ and ‘taking the oath of office’.

That left him with only two more: ‘crowning a royal’ and ‘passing a budget’.

Peters would later find out that only two people have lost the $500,000 question in 10 years, noting ‘it’s very hard to justify gambling $225,000 on a hunch’.

But Peters said he knew he was always going to gamble. What he didn’t know at the time was that he was about to become the third person to lose the question. 

Justin had been confident on the show, having breezed through most of the questions, with the writer finding the earlier questions so easy that he believed they were ‘put there just for me’.

He told how he promised his sister that he wouldn’t walk away with the money under any circumstances – insisting he would gamble with the money he’d won and will play on ‘until I reached either damnation or glory’.

As he talked out the choices with Crews, Justin decided it had to be ‘crowning a royal’ because it was a ‘celebratory occasion’.

The host tried to remind Justin what he would lose if his guess was wrong but Justin’s response was to ask, ‘unreasonably cocky’ he notes, what he would win if his guess was right. 

‘Let’s make this a game’ Justin told Terry, giving his answer as B. The answer was D. 

Describing the moment of his loss, Justin wrote: ‘Have you ever wondered what it feels like to lose a fortune? To have in your hand the money that would change your life, and then watch that money turn to vapor? When I lost $225,000 in a single second, it was like a needle had been pushed through my cerebral cortex, pinning me to the spot of my failure. I walked off stage in a daze, my mind still affixed to that cataclysmic moment.’

Despite a producer branding him ‘the best contestant I’ve ever had’ and various crew members praising his game as he walked backstage having gambled away $225,000, Justin recalls feeling at an absolute loss.  

An aspiring screenwriter and comedic actor, he had been hoping to use the money as a cushion so that he could finally pursue the dreams he’d put on the back burner for so long. 

His car ride home with his sister and pals was an awkward one as he shut them down for trying to sympathise with him, with Justin only able to think of how poorly he played the last question.

Upon reflection, Justin worked out why the answer he gave couldn’t have been correct, kicking himself for not taking enough time to think about it.

Justin was so upset the night of the loss that he drove from New York to Boston to be with family. 

Explaining how he felt when he had returned home, he shared: ‘I got back to Brooklyn. I went up to my cramped apartment, where the cold water didn’t work, the front door had no knob, and the landlord hated me. I buried my head in a sofa cushion and cried. I couldn’t be in New York that night.’

He added that he drove to Brooklyn and begged his sister to be with him, sobbing that he couldn’t ‘be alone’ at that time. 

But he said it was the next day, as he walked around and ruminated on the experience, that he understood it was not about what he had lost – but what he could gain.

Peters said he realised that taking the gamble when there was such high stakes could be a life lesson. It has proved to him that he had the courage to take risks, the kind that he had been too scared to take so far in his career. 

Reflecting on how he opted to change his life, he said: ‘I called Kelly, my in-studio lifeline. I was semihysterical. “The fact that I went for it. what has to change my life. Not the money, but the fact that I made that decision,” I told her. “I need to make this have meaning. I need to derive more meaning from the loss than I would from the win”.’

The moment of realisation struck so physically that he ‘collapsed on the steps of a townhouse’ while screaming, with the journalist noting that he’d finally ‘found meaning in my failure.’

And when Peters re-watched his performance on screen, he saw just how well he could command an audience – how he could work a stage. 

Justin decided he will spend the entire sum he received from Millionaire pursuing his dreams and ‘taking the shot.’

After describing his time on the show as an ‘existentially transformative experience’, Justin told how he finally found the confidence to pursue his dream of being a comedic actor and screenwriter – noting how the experience made him realise that the confidence was ‘there all along’.

And this newfound confidence even allowed him to take his improv duo on tour, which he described as ‘exciting and sort of daunting.’

Despite stepping into the ‘completely unknown’, the thought of doing so no longer scares him, and that’s all down to him becoming one of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’s biggest losers.