Reid Ewing, the actor who played Sarah Hyland's boyfriend Dylan on Modern Family for six years, opens up about his battle with body dysmorphia and his addiction to plastic surgery in a painfully honest post.
"Body dysmorphic disorder is a mental illness in which a person obsesses over the way he or she looks," Ewing shared. "In my case, my looks were the only thing that mattered to me. I had just moved to L.A. to become an actor and had very few, if any, friends."
The 27-year-old confessed that he first underwent plastic surgery, large cheek implants in 2008 after moving to Los Angeles to pursue acting.
Ewing admitted that when he was 19 he made his first appointment to meet with a cosmetic surgeon and believed that if he had one procedure he would suddenly look like "Brad Pitt".
“I woke up screaming my head off from pain, with tears streaming down my face,” he wrote of the surgery. But after recovering, Ewing wasn’t much happier with the results. He didn't like what he saw when the lower half of his cheeks were so hollow that he looked like a corpse.
The surgery led to more surgeries until Ewing developed a full-fledged addiction to cosmetic procedures.
He shared that he went back to the doctor several times to have his flaws corrected but the doctor rejected him, saying that he needs to wait for 6 more months until the doctor can operate on him again. The actor revealed that he stayed in complete isolation because he didn't want anyone to see him looking like that.
Ewing related that it took him six months to get comfortable with people looking at him after the surgery. He continued to feel insecure with the way he looks. However, in 2012, he vowed he would never get plastic surgery again.
His decision to come out in the open about the surgery and his ordeal came about after he saw his doctor offering cosmetic surgery tips in a magazine. Ewing wrote:
"Before seeking to change your face, you should question whether it is your mind that needs fixing. Of the four doctors who worked on me, not one had mental health screenings in place for their patients, except for asking if I had a history of depression, which I said I did, and that was that. My history with eating disorders and the cases of obsessive compulsive disorder in my family never came up. None of the doctors suggested I consult a psychologist for what was clearly a psychological issue rather than a cosmetic one or warn me about the potential for addiction."
Reid Ewing is currently attending college in Utah, his other credits include "Fright Night," "The Truth Below" and "10 Rules for Sleeping Around."
