Gym-obsessed dad given hours to live after ‘cooking his insides’ with diet pills
A DAD who wanted a perfect ‘beach body’ was given hours to live after he
overdosed on controversial diet pills – which “cooked” his body
from the inside.
Lewis Brown, 25, started going to the gym to get fit but quickly became
obsessed with working out and started taking steroids to gain a
15-and-a-half stone frame.
The lab worker – who went to the gym every day – then turned to controversial
diet pills DNP this summer to help him lose extra fat so he could add more
muscle.
But the father-of-one overdosed when he took eight of the ‘fat burners’ in a
day and the poisonous chemicals increased his body temperature to almost 42
degrees.
Worried medics were forced to put Lewis in a coma while they covered him in
ice, but when his muscles started to die, his devastated family were called
to say goodbye.
Miraculously Lewis, from Haverhill, Suffolk, pulled through – but not before
medics were forced to cut out a leg muscle which had died.
Now he is warning of the dangers of the illegal pills which can easily be
bought for just 3p each online.
Lewis said: “I was so out of it about getting bigger that I thought I was
unstoppable.
“I just wanted to be better than anyone else.
“I was a different person then – everyone has said. All I was interested
in was getting bigger and I just didn’t know what I was doing.
“I’m just lucky that I’m still alive.
“I remember seeing a story about DNP and people who died and just
thinking they weren’t taking them right.
“But I have done it myself now and I can tell you, you just get caught up
in it so quickly.”
Handsome Lewis, who lives with partner Tara Watterson, 25, started going to
the gym when he was aged 20 and weighed a healthy 10st.
But around two years ago he started using steroids he bought online and from
pals to bulk up, and reached around 15-and-a-half stone.
He forked out around £100 a month for the medicines, which he would inject or
take orally two or three times a week.
Despite noticing he was becoming aggressive and obsessive, the gym fanatic
continued work out.
As well as taking steroids, he bought DNP pills – dinitrophenol – off the
internet for £30 a packet, in a bid to get a ‘summer body’ in July.
DNP causes the body to run out of energy, accelerates metabolism to a
dangerously fast level and causes the body’s temperature to rise.
He had taken three or four of the controversial tablets a day for a couple of
weeks in early 2015, but on July 23 he took eight in 12 hours – his first
day of re-taking the tablets.
The near-fatal does was the exact number taken by student Eloise Parry, 21,
from Shrewsbury, who died just months earlier.
“I was hoping the steroids would keep the muscles, but the tablets would
strip the fat,” he said.
“I took three in the morning and I didn’t feel anything for a few hours,
so stupidly I took another five.”
Realising his mistake when he started to get hotter and hotter, he drove
himself to accident and emergency at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.
Medics ordered him to neck a charcoal drink to ‘soak up’ the chemicals, but
the toxic chemicals were already attacking his body.
His temperature soared to a staggering 39.8 degrees, and doctors put him in an
induced coma and gave him ice baths, while warning his family to prepare for
the worst.
“They said if I didn’t drink it I could die,” he said.
“I remember drinking it, but that’s the last thing I remember.
“Apparently after that I started to get really confused and they called
my family.
“My body was just heating up and cooking from the inside out.
“I was put in the coma I think to stop my body moving and doing anything
that would cause heat.
“The doctors told my family I could have just two or three hours to live,
and that I wouldn’t make it through the night.
“They all thought that was it.”
He spent three days in a coma and a week in intensive care, before doctors
were forced to perform three operations to cut out his entire muscle at the
front of his left leg.
It had been killed off when it was “cooked” by the drugs, and it
took Lewis four months to recover and get back to work.
Lewis, who had previously never revealed the full extend of his obsession to
his family before, has spoken out to raise awareness of the dangers of
steroids and diet pills.
He said: “I’ve got this leg now, but it’s just something I have to deal
with.
“Before I was a bit reclusive and everything annoyed me, and I didn’t
want to do anything.
“Now I’m getting back to my old self. My family are really relieved.
“The doctors have said I’m very lucky to be alive.
“I’m going to go back to the gym because I like to keep fit, but I’m
never touching pills or steroids ever again.”
DNP is sold mostly over the internet under a number of different names but
contains 2, 4-Dinitrophenol.
It is marketed mainly to bodybuilders as a weight loss aid as it is thought to
dramatically boost metabolism.
According to a study in the Journal of Medical Toxicity more than 60 deaths
have been attributed to DNP.