A father from Ohio who started every morning with an awful hangover began to notice his weight spiral out of control, reaching up to a whopping 350 pounds (159 kg). With this, his mood changed, and he was riddled with feelings of anxiety and self-hate. However, after facing a brush with death, his life took a 180-degree turn and he’s now been 20 months sober.
“I now have this almost boundless sense of energy that hasn’t been with me for many years,” Ryan Thom, a plant manager in the manufacturing field, told The Epoch Times. “It literally feels like this long, cold winter in my life has finally ended and it is spring again.”
Early Life
Born in El Paso, Texas, Ryan has lived across many different states growing up, as his father worked for the U.S. Customs and was transferred around a fair amount for his job. When he was young, it seemed like every year or two he would be moved off to a new school. But that didn’t seem to affect him and he was always a good student who finished near the top of his class during high school.Owing to his shy nature, Ryan didn’t seem to have a lot of friends as he grew up. At the age of 16, he took his first sip of alcohol, but didn’t necessarily enjoy it.
“My serious problem with alcohol began in my late teens and I met my best friend, Dennis,” Ryan said. “Dennis was a popular, social guy with a lot of friends, and being around him suddenly fulfilled a few things that had been missing in my life until then.”
Ryan was suddenly flung into a world with popular people and found himself surrounded by more friends than he ever had. As he and Dennis crossed the legal age of drinking, their plans began to revolve around alcohol. Ryan, Dennis, and a group of friends would go out shooting pool, drinking, and partying almost every night of the week.
“I was in my mid-20s when I really began to suspect I had a problem,” Ryan recalled.
Slowly, Ryan began to notice that his consumption of alcohol had only increased. By 2015, his drinking had accelerated, and he increased things incrementally on a continuous basis.
“I started drinking 10 beers a day, then 11, then 12,” Ryan said. “Then, when Covid hit, there was a threat of nationwide lockdowns and I started drinking vodka instead of beer since it was more compact to store, and I didn’t have to make as many trips in public to get my supply.”
At his peak, Ryan was consuming a liter and a half of vodka daily because he had high physical tolerance.
Naturally, with the increase in alcohol consumption, Ryan’s weight went up proportionally. He noticed that he began to put on weight in the mid section, and later stopped worrying about his appearance. By 2o19, Ryan weighed his heaviest: 350 pounds.
“I stopped fighting my addiction and basically ‘gave in’ to what was happening to me,” Ryan said. “At one point, I couldn’t even look at myself in a mirror because it caused me so much anxiety.”
Through those years, Ryan also noticed that his mental health and relationships with people had “dramatically declined.”
With his weight and mood altered, he felt a sense of incredible despair and began to hide from the people close to him. He started to keep an arm’s-length distance from his wife and children, not because his feelings changed for them, but because he was embarrassed and had grown to hate himself.
“I was utterly embarrassed by myself and what I had become, and just the thought of showing my face to certain people would give me a panic attack,” Ryan said. “There were times when I stopped talking to some people, such as my friend Dennis, entirely. With some other people, such as my father, brother, and sister, I would only interact over text messages and never let them see me in person.”
For a brief period, Ryan was treated for clinical depression, but the treatment lapsed when he ceased having contact with doctors for several years.
Knowing he had a serious problem with alcohol, Ryan made several attempts over the years to quit drinking and to get straightened up, but was always pulled back. He made it successfully for a week, or a month, and once even a full year, without sipping on alcohol, but he would always circle back because he felt like his life was missing something, “under the guise of boredom, seeking a good time.”
Now, reflecting back, he sees that those early attempts to quit were “laughably insufficient.”
Turning Point
Ryan’s life took a major turn in September 2020, when he started experiencing intense cramps and stomach pains. thus he visited an ER. Diagnosed with alcoholic hepatitis, he was discharged after a few days with instructions to see a primary care doctor, get a colonoscopy, and stop drinking alcohol.After this health scare, Ryan tried to abstain from alcohol, but on the morning of Oct. 1, he reportedly had his last few drinks.
“I felt a deep, deep sense of being unwell, of being critically ill,” he recalled. “I couldn’t place my finger on exactly what was the problem, but I knew it was bad.”
He took some leave from work while he awaited the colonoscopy, hoping he would get some answers as to what was happening. He never made it to that appointment.
In the wee hours of Oct. 20, Ryan awoke with the taste of blood in his mouth.
Describing his state, he said: “I felt blood oozing out of my gums. My head was swimming. I got up, made my way to the bathroom, flipped on the light switch, and looked in the mirror. My blood went cold in my veins. Staring back at me was someone I didn’t even recognize. My face and eyes had turned bright yellow with jaundice; my mouth was dripping with blood.”
Ryan says he knew instantly what had happened: his liver had failed. Shocked by this, he sat down in the bathroom and cried for a really long time.
Later that day, he had collected himself enough to contact his wife and they both then went to the hospital. The diagnosis was bleak: hepatorenal syndrome, which involved the collapse of both his liver and kidneys. He was immediately placed on dialysis so as to keep the toxins from building up in his blood.
In a process termed hepatic encephalopathy, the ammonia levels in Ryan’s blood built up and he began to lose all control of his mental capacity, causing him to hallucinate.
“In my delusional state, I thought the doctors and nurses were out to kill me at times,“ Ryan said. ”I was told I would completely black out and become aggressive and combative with some hospital staff.
“There was even one episode where I felt my consciousness begin to recede and something very primal in my brain said, this maybe it for me, if I don’t get out of this right away, I’m going to die right here, right now.”
At one point, he was unable to answer basic questions such as his name and location. Ryan was declared medically incompetent and decision-making for his continued care was passed to the family. After consultations with physicians, the decision was made to stop treatment and let him pass on.
“I laid in a hospital bed for days after that, unconscious, except maybe brief glimpses of the world around me,“ Ryan explained. ”But I hung around and clung to life, and one day, I woke up, after what felt like an incredibly long nap, and there was a doctor in the room I was in.”
Recovery
Ryan began to chat with the doctor. She asked him if he wanted to continue being treated, and this alarmed him, as he thought he was in a hospital after all, and was unaware that he was no longer being treated.It was after that moment that Ryan began his journey back from near death. Within a week, he was starting to feel better, and his kidney function began to return. Released into a skilled nursing facility, he was too weak to walk, but one of the criteria for his release was to be able to walk up a flight of stairs.
“It took every ounce of energy and a full 20 minutes,” he said, “but I did walk up that flight of stairs. I was released from that facility at the end of 2020.”
After his release and seeing his world come crashing down at the hospital, he went completely sober and has not been tempted to drink ever since.
“The severe trauma of the hospital visit precludes the traditional relapse triggers that I had in the past,” Ryan said. “There is no amount of boredom or thrill-seeking that would cause me to even contemplate drinking again after the things I lived through.”
Since adopting a clean life, Ryan has got into an exercise routine and hasn’t felt this physically strong in decades.
He has also become more confident in looking into the mirror without getting a panic attack, and has been able to mend all the relationships from the past. It has been a massive sense of relief for his family and they’ve begun to realize that the changes are permanent.
“I’m now a stable person that they now can rely on to be there for them, and the threat of a relapse is basically non-existent. I can proudly say that the person who I refer to as the real Ryan is here to stay,” Ryan said. “My mind is now clear, and the mental fog that I was living in for a long time has finally receded.”
Ryan strongly believes that he couldn’t have undergone this immense transformation without the continued trust, love, and support of his family, as they were able to pick him up when he faltered in his dark times. Although at one time he pushed them away, he’s grateful that they stuck around with him.
Additionally, he thanks his incredible medical team for saving his life.
Being a victim of alcoholism, Ryan shares a piece of advice to those who are struggling with alcohol addiction.
“First, don’t ever shy away from getting professional help; doing so may have made things a lot easier for me in the long run,” he said. “My other piece of advice is that, if you think you might have a problem, then you almost certainly do, and it is at that point you need to fight alcohol with everything you have.”
