Man says he 'almost lost his life' after using supplements as Brits issued warning
A man said he became 'so detached from reality' that he thought his mother-in-law was trying to kill him after taking what he thought were dietary supplements from a company whose owner has just been sentenced to almost six years in prison.
Matthew Kawa, who ran Paradigm Peptides, pleaded guilty to illegally importing unapproved drugs and selling them, with him given a 70-month sentence.
At a court in Indiana a judge heard that the US company did business with 80 countries, with Kawa acknowledging that their thousands of customers trusted his statements about the products they were buying from him.
Speaking to the court, the American businessman said: "I'm deeply sorry I betrayed that trust.
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"I should have asked harder questions and made sure what we did followed the law."
Paradigm Peptides was shut down in March 2024, reports CBS, and they sold various products advertised 'for research use only', with Kawa admitting in a plea deal he knew they were being sold for human consumption and that he'd forged certificates to make the drugs seem like the real deal.
One of the people affected by this was Daniel Murphy, who bought an experimental drug known as Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators (SARMs) which he thought were dietary supplements.
Murphy thought it'd be 'no different than taking vitamin D' and started on them in 2023 with the idea that they'd help him build up some muscle in the gym.
"When I started taking the product, right away I felt an increase in energy. I was really happy with that," he said, and then things went very badly wrong for him.
As he found he could push his body further he got more obsessive about it, but the things he was taking also started having a disturbing impact on his mind.
Murphy struggled to sleep and developed a sense of paranoia, becoming fearful that his mother-in-law was going to try and kill him and his wife was trying to steal his career as he became less in touch with the real world.
He said: "I lost friends, family, colleagues, clients and almost lost my life.
"I had gotten so detached from reality that I could not make any connection to the supplements as the cause."
The man said he tried to 'burn down' everything in his life, and it wasn't until February 2025 when he got a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice about the investigation into Paradigm Peptides that he put together that the company he'd been buying his 'dietary supplement' from wasn't to be trusted.
Murphy and his wife had a bottle of SARMs tested independently in a lab and found it contained testosterone, while the product was merely supposed to mimic some of its effects.
The man was diagnosed with 'steroid-induced psychosis' from taking something that wasn't as advertised.
According to the BBC, Professor Adam Taylor has been warning that while this happened over in the US the dangers are the same in the UK of buying things not approved for human use and suffering the consequences.
Joe Harker