A Love Is Blind Contestant Broke Out in Tears Over an Ibuprofen Addiction, "I Got Up to Taking Around 20, Maybe Even More Every Day"
The man in the tweet above is named Devin. He is a contestant on the Netflix dating show "Love Is Blind". The show where contestants date each other and eventually get engaged without ever seeing each other's faces. The show where Netflix sets out to prove that "love is truly blind". Every season they completely fail to do so. Almost every couple breaks up in the end. But apparently enough people still watch it, because we're now on season 8 of this thing. I've loosely watched pretty much every season. My fiancée will throw it on in the bedroom and I'm always kinda-sorta paying attention to what's happening as I scroll my phone, or do whatever else. But every now and then I'll hear something that piques my interest. And last night there was a moment that nearly made me spit out my Lucy nicotine pouch.
In a moment of deep conversation, Devin and one of his two remaining behind-a-wall girlfriend's were getting down to the nitty gritty details of their past trauma. This guy, Devin... with as a serious of a tone as one can have... painfully admitted to his potential future wives (he told this story to each of them separately) that his life's rock bottom was a time when he got viciously addicted to the OTC anti-inflammatory drug, ibuprofen (i.e. Advil).
Love Is Blind star Devin Buckley opened up in season 8 about struggling with a back injury in high school that led to him taking up to 20 ibuprofen pills a day.
“I’m a basketball player my whole life. Senior year of high school, my back started to get really bad,” Devin, 29, told fellow LIB costar Brittany Dodson in episode 4. “I started to feel shooting pain down my legs, and my feet would be numb and getting out of bed was hard. Putting shoes on was hard. Walking was hard, and I just refused to tell myself that I’m never going to play basketball again. I don’t care how bad it hurts. I’m not going to stop.”
The youth mentor said that his family tried a wide range of treatments from cryotherapy to acupuncture, but Devin claimed nothing helped
He continued, “I took two ibuprofen before practice, then I doubled it. It was four. So then it turned from four to eight to 12 to 16 to 20 and I was just getting to the point where I was kind of, like, fighting with myself.”
I've struggled with addiction for a large portion of my life. One thing I've been told is that you're not supposed to judge other people's addictions. You never know what other people are going through. Somebody's Percocet addiction could be just as crippling, if not more crippling than another person's heroin addiction. Addiction comes in all shapes in sizes, and nobody's two stories are the same. So I try to live by that. And I'm not denying that Devin went through some shit during that time. It sounds like he was done extremely dirty by some incompetent doctors. But my man… you didn't have an ibuprofen addiction. That's not possible.
I guess he technically was abusing drugs. He's not wrong there. I'm not saying Devin's 20 ibuprofen's per day weren't ripping up his insides. In reality, taking 20 ibuprofen's per day is probably worse for your health than taking a few Vicodin. I don't think I've ever come across a situation in my life where I thought to myself, "If only this man had been introduced to recreational opiates at a young age." Then at least he would have known that the over the counter meds he was taking weren't going to work. It's really one of the more bizarre things I've ever heard of somebody doing. I mostly feel bad that Devin is beating himself up about being a drug addict. You can tell he feels shame from it. But he shouldn't. It's ok man. In many ways taking 20 ibuprofens per day and never turning to something stronger is the least drug addict-like behavior I've ever heard of. It's just beating your head against a wall trying to find a solution to a problem using a method that most reasonable people could tell you would never work.
Going through social media, there's a lot of people speculating that "ibuprofen" was a cover for something stronger. That in reality he was taking some sort of prescription opiate. They think Love Is Blind wouldn't allow a contestant to discuss hard drugs on their "family friendly program". But I don't buy that. For one, Love Is Blind is not a family friendly program. They talk about sex and adult topics in pretty good detail. And the difference between ibuprofen and prescription opiates is so vast, it would be asking Devin to change the reality of his story way too much for Netflix to make him swap out the names of the drugs. I might understand it if they asked someone to say their cocaine addiction was Adderall, or have a contestant scale back just how bad his/her alcoholism was. But ibuprofen and Percocet's just aren't even comparable.
However, if that is the case, and Devin really did have a real opiate addiction, then he's gotta get out there to clear his name. I would way rather the world think I had a legitimate drug problem than think I believed I was physically dependent on anti-inflammatories.
Honestly I'm kinda surprised none of the girls he told this story to dumped him after that. Being that ill-informed about the world would be a bit of a red flag to me. I suppose on some level it's a good thing that Devin is so far removed from the world of drugs that he could ever think taking 20+ Advil per day was a solution to anything. But sometimes it pays to at least have a drug guy in your life. Somebody to tell you that 20 ibuprofens per day is not going to solve any problem whatsoever.
Good luck out there, Devin. If you happen to read this, please stop beating yourself up about abusing drugs. What you did wasn't smart, but you're not a drug addict. You don't exhibit drug addict behavior. The fact that you made it though all that without ever turning to opiates is the complete opposite of drug addict behavior. What you really had was a doctor problem. For you to be in that much pain, and have your doctors do nothing but recommend you take some Advil. That's fucked up. I sounds like you were a stone's throw away from being able to sue for malpractice. But I'm glad you finally found a good one. I'm glad you can play basketball pain free again. And I'm glad the journey you went on that had you taking 20 ibuprofen a day helped you find God who could point you to a competent doctor. For your own sake, please stop telling people you had an ibuprofen problem. Or at least frame it in a different way. Because as hard as I'm sure that time was for you, your recounting of the story is not coming off in the way I think you want it to.