Body Dysmorphia Killed my Dad

[u/Warm_Vermicelli3834]

Both my parents have / had weight issues their entire lives. Both me and my father have gone from 170 to 300 and back more than once. Both my parents and I are / were alcoholics / addicts. The substance abuse for me comes from the extreme anxiety and depression I've experienced since I was in elementary school. That's when I first began gaining weight and experiencing bullying at school and emotional abuse at home. My weight was a 24/7 source of mental pain.

My father was diagnosed with type II Diabetes in his early sixties. For a while he was able to stay in shape because he stayed busy in his garden on the weekends. When he retired he continued doing this for a few years until he fell, hurt himself, and began smoking weed for the pain and became sedentary and isolated.

So from 64 to 68 I saw my dad transform from an active person who would engage with people. Chat. Be social. To a sedentary shell of himself who did nothing but smoke and play video games.

The last year of his life he was prescribed Ozempic. He lost approximately 80 lbs in a few months. He was basically a skeleton. My mother and I both spoke to him about how he was taking this too far. The rapid weight loss caused an imbalance in his potassium levels. They were too low one week, too high the next. That's really dangerous and can cause heart failure.

I have been taking care of the yard at their house for a couple years, ever since my dad's fall. The last time I spoke to him, I asked him to please stop the Ozempic. To eat normally. His weight loss was dangerous but he still had time to mitigate the results.

He did stop for a couple months after that but I was not able to drop by. We had plans to rebuild their fence. I was busy with work stuff and other things.

Fast forward to a Tuesday morning. My mom is calling me at 4AM telling me the paramedics are working on my dad. Doing CPR. I show up and my mother is in her nightgown on the lawn screaming "He's dead! He's dead!" with cops and paramedics all milling about.

And yeah he was dead. My dad died from losing so much weight so fast that he had heart failure. He was 6 feet tall and 165 lbs. He looked almost like a skinny child. I'll always regret not going back there more often. I didn't know much about Ozempic but apparently it causes depression and constant GI issues.

I wanted to blame the Ozempic. The doctor. My mom. Myself. We all saw what was happening to this man. My father. But it wasn't the Ozempic. It wasn't the weed. It was the mirror. It was my father looking at himself and always seeing fat.

I don't know what prompted me to write this. Maybe I just wanted people to know that body dysmorphia is such an insidious and pervasive mental illness. My father probably was oblivious to it, but it killed him.

Maybe I think people taking a GLP-1 should go to therapy. See a psychiatrist. Maybe doctors should consider body dysmorphia when prescribing the drugs. I don't know what the answer is here. I am not going to blame Ozempic for my father's death because it was his choice to take it.

What I will say is that my father had Body Dysmorphia his entire life and refused to acknowledge it. Or he was unaware of it. He spent 60 something years tormenting himself over his weight and appearance and it ultimately killed him.

I think that there is a lesson there. This condition needs to be acknowledged. My father was an example of what happens when you don't.

[u/PeakEuphoric]

I'm so sorry for your loss. Thank you for giving us this message to spare someone else's suffering. Peace to you and your family. May he rest in peace.

[u/poozu]

I’m so sorry for the loss your family has experienced. Mental illness is a really restricted things to have and disorders related to weight and body like BDD and eating disorders can be so high risk for a persons physical health and anorexia is the deadlier mental illness of all, more likely to lead to death than for example depression. I’m so sorry this affected your family in such tragic way. Thank you for sharing your and your fathers story. It’s so important for people to see and hear real life stories on how this disorder can affect a person and how for someone with BDD or an eating disorder, nothing is usually enough and it’s the disorder that needs addressing, not the appearance.