Man who said painkillers turned him gay gets schooled by doctor on This Morning
(ITV)
A man who said that his painkillers turned him gay had his self-professed apparent change of sexuality explained to him by a doctor on live TV.
Scott Purdy, 23, appeared on ITV’s This Morning after alleging that Pregabalin, sold by pharmaceutical company Pfizer as Lyrica, turned him gay.
He said he was straight, with a girlfriend of six months, until a go-karting accident left him with a broken foot and the need to dull the pain.
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Purdy, who comes from Louth in Lincolnshire, explained to hosts Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield that he hadn’t experienced same-sex attraction since briefly experimenting when he was a teenager.
“When I was 16 or 17 I was a little curious, and there was a lad who I knew who was gay, and I started kissing him and that, but I turned around and said ‘Nah, this ain’t for me,'” he said.
Purdy broke his foot in 2012, and said that once he switched from Codeine and Tramadol to Pregabalin, it was just “four or five days” until his sexuality felt different.
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He explained that when it came to his girlfriend, he “started giving her less cuddles, less attention.
“All I craved and wanted was male attention. I thought it was a bit weird, so I stopped all medication. Everything,” said Purdy.
“As soon as that happened and I stopped taking it, my attraction to my (now) ex-girlfriend went back up. I was more intimate with her, cuddly with her – everything was normal.”
But now, Purdy says he’s happy being gay, and scared that if he goes off the medication, his heterosexual feelings will return.
“I’m really happy now I’m on it. I know now – the fear is that I stop taking it and I go back to how I was. But I wouldn’t wanna do that.”
When asked if perhaps he was gay all along and made to feel less anxious about his sexuality by the medication, he responded: “I never had desires for men.”
“I didn’t look upon men like, ‘I really want you,’ or anything like that. It’s so recent and so out of the blue,” Purdy explained.
But Dr. Ranj Singh, an NHS doctor, presenter and author, told Purdy that the drug had not made him gay, but had instead likely brought his true sexuality to the surface.
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“It does calm down anxiety, it will have an effect on your mood, it will have an effect on the way you think about things,” he said.
“It could be that calming everything else down has allowed you to see a bit more clearly, rather than actually changing your sexuality.
“Your sexuality’s probably a bit more complex than you think.”
Singh explained that the drug can give people “a heightened sexual desire.”
He added that when it came to Purdy, “what it probably does is allow you to be able to express what was already there, I think. That’s my professional opinion.”
“I know I haven’t lived your experience, but my professional opinion would be that all it has done is allow you to be your true self,” said Singh.
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“Which is okay, because these feelings were probably already there, and sexuality’s complex. It’s not black and white. And different people experience it differently, and some people are fluid.
“You might be attracted to a woman at one stage in your life, you might be attracted to someone else at another stage,” he continued.
“But this has allowed you and given you permission to be who you are, which is – if you’re happy, that’s a good thing.”
The doctor said he had been on pregabalin, and “it didn’t make me gayer!”
Singh told the hosts: “I don’t think we need to think that the medication has done this,” before telling Purdy: “You don’t need to rely on this medication to allow you to be who you want to be or feel happiest being.”
On Twitter, the doctor added: “Sexuality is complex. No matter what has led him to it, I’m just glad that Scott is happy & able to be who he is! That’s the most important thing here! ❤️
(Twitter/drranj)
“It’s not up to any of us to judge or belittle anyone’s coming-out journey. It is different for everyone, and each person has their own way of dealing with it (which may be out of their control).
“So let’s just be kind and supportive ❤️ x”.
Watch Purdy get schooled here:
