This is the part about being a journalist in the fitness industry that I hate the most, having to wake up with a heavy heart after going to sleep the night before hoping that the news was just a bad dream. I couldn’t bring myself to write this article last night when I first became aware of the news of the passing of Connor Murphy. Connor was very much one of the O.G.’s of fitness on socials. He was one of the pioneers that put working out on the social media map. And he didn’t do it by competing or by posting a whole bunch of training videos or supplementation videos, he did it through entertainment, through abdominal reveals, through interactions with the everyday public, through humor and maybe even a little bit of shock value thrown in for good measure. He talked about eating, fasting, and posing. But if you were to deconstruct and reconstruct his work, if you were truly to analyze it, it would essentially amount to reaching people. He reached millions. He inspired people of all ages and his legacy will undoubtedly carry on because we will make sure it carries on. But before we talk about the future, before we talk about his lasting impression, we can’t gloss over the fact that we lost this truly tremendous individual at just 32 years of age. Imagine the pain and suffering his passing will cause to his friends and family. Imagine his parents having to bury their child. No parent should ever have to experience that. This is truly a tragedy.
Freedom is a beautiful thing. We just celebrated our country’s 250 year anniversary on July 4th. Believe you me, I’m not going to be the one to say that we need less freedoms. I will always advocate for more. Unfortunately many bodybuilding enthusiasts are going to Thailand to experiment with drugs that they cannot experiment with here in the United States or in the western world. Thailand is a beautiful country with beautiful people. It has a rich history and is a driving force in southeast Asia economically and philanthropically. I don’t want to throw any shade at this wonderful country. It truly is a wonderful country because it embraces freedom. There are less restrictions on what people can do to truly live happy lives. I know countless individuals that live in Thailand and are very happy. Unfortunately, there are also many bodybuilders that go to this beautiful country to experiment with all sorts of compounds, not just the ones used to compete on bodybuilding stages.
That term experiment is very ambiguous. It’s a very general term that encompasses many different things. The word itself speaks to the recklessness involved when it comes to drugs. recreational drugs, psychoactive drugs, muscle building drugs, drugs that aren’t even drugs. I mean we are all familiar at least in the journals and the message boards with exotic compounds. Compounds that haven’t even been researched on any level on humans. Many of these compounds have not been tested on animals, either. They might be laboratory concoctions by underground chemists looking to put out the next party drug or the next diuretic. I mean if bodybuilders will use DNP, which is a pesticide, there’s no telling what they will put in their body. Bodybuilders want an edge, but sometimes it isn’t even about bodybuilding, maybe they want an upper or a downer. Who really knows? But that’s just it, it’s become almost carved in stone that if you want to try your hand at powders or pills or injectables Thailand is the place to be. What a sad reality for that country and what a sad reality it is for those in our industry that go there looking for no holds barred when it comes to sampling all kinds of chemicals.
Far be it from me to ever glamorize Big Pharma. To me when it comes to Big Pharma, there’s no difference between them and an organized crime family. They’re not in the business of healing, they’re in the business of making money. And if people die in the process, people who don’t have the means to acquire the lifesaving drugs they make, then so be it. I don’t have any admiration for Big Pharma, but I do have to admit that the drugs they bring to market have been highly researched, tested, and analyzed. The drugs that are being purchased in Thailand could come from bathtub “labs” or street chemists with zero to no moral integrity. It’s not bad enough that the drugs themselves can have dire consequences but those selling the drugs could be selling anything from baking soda to rat poison. Can you really expect any kind of moral compass from a drug dealer? I mean to each their own, but looking for humanity from street-level criminals is beyond naivety. It’s stupidity – plain and simple. But I say this to you, I would never say this to somebody who is deep in the throes of addiction. Again we don’t know what Connor was experimenting with, we just know of the Thailand promoted by guys like Tony Huge, guys who look at it as an oasis for those who are legally restricted in their home countries from leading certain lifestyles. Whether that be drugs, whether that be the party lifestyle, whatever it may be, Thailand has been marketed as the place to go to live life, to live your (alleged) best life. It’s a great place for many, but it wasn’t a great place for Connor.
From everything that I’ve read, Connor was having a nervous breakdown, perhaps a psychotic episode, and the locals ended up calling the police. The police arrived and Connor’s reaction was to flee. I don’t know if they pursued him. I also don’t know how much training the police had with mental health and drug use/addiction. If they tried to come in numbers and they tried to capture him and that caused him to flee by jumping into a very deep and rough lake, that’s entirely speculative. It is pretty clear though that he did not want to interact with them and they wanted to apprehend him. I’m not faulting the police, I’m just questioning whether they had the adequate training to deal with someone in Connor’s state of mind. Ultimately the role of the police is to keep the peace and protect the public. And if Connor was presenting a danger to the safety of others, even if he was damaging property, that would be sufficient for them to intervene. Nobody could ever have expected that he would try to swim away from them and given the depth of the lake and more than likely the underlying currents, saving him was perhaps not plausible. Besides that, it’s been described as if he had a psychological break. So it’s not just that they couldn’t save him, but even if they reached him he may have presented a danger to those trying to save him, as well.
How did it even get to this? Why am I writing an article about a 32-year-old fitness influencer who seemingly had it all, dying at this very young age? I can’t even begin to tell you how many of Connor’s videos went viral! Everybody knew his name, he would get mobbed at expos, he would also get spotted in public – in mainstream public. Forget about the Arnold Classic Expo or FIBO, he would get spotted at Starbucks, he would get spotted at the mall; he was for lack of a better term, a household name when it came to fitness. He was part of that first and second wave of YouTube. He put bodybuilding on the map and he made healthy eating and sound supplementation the roadmap for countless individuals looking to get into physique-based sports.
I don’t attribute his death only to drugs. I also believe that there is something to be said about mental health. If somebody is in a bad spot in life and then they add drugs to the mix, that may be the beginning of the end. As I said on my social media post this morning, it’s next to impossible for one man to steer another man away from doing something they want. If that man is living life according to their own terms and even going to the extent of moving half way around the world to Thailand, it would have been futile for pretty much anyone to get Connor out of the mindset he probably found himself in. And not just the mindset, the mental state. Fuck mindset, mindset is just mindset. Mental health is something completely different. It’s so much more vast, so much more difficult to address without mental healthcare professionals around the individual. I hate to ramble, but these articles are not pleasant to write. They’re not pleasant at all.
I hate to curse on an article paying tribute to someone that has passed but I’m outraged. I’m outraged and I’m heartbroken. I’m crushed. I know that many of you reading this article know exactly where I’m coming from and what I’m talking about. Connor was not the first and sadly will not be the last. It seems like these deaths have become far more common in our industry.
I’d like to send my sincerest condolences to Connor’s friends and family. To his fans I say, we will keep his legacy alive at all costs! Thank you for reading my article, here, at IronMag. Please consider copying and pasting a link to this article on all your social media feeds. Let’s remember Connor and keep his memory alive.
Rest in peace, brother.
Author Bio:
Christian I. Duque is the owner of StrengthAddicts.com, a physique and strength website founded in 2008. He has worked for a number of bodybuilding websites, including RX Muscle and Muscular Development. Christian has written nearly 1,000 published articles for IronMag Blog, as well as articles for StrengthAddicts, RX Muscle, and others. By day, he is also a licensed attorney practicing in the areas of family law, immigration, and criminal defense.
