Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Ricard Siagian was an Indonesian YouTuber and tattoo artist who gained attention for documenting his harrowing battle with a rare and fatal sleep disorder. In 2015, after being prescribed antibiotics for a urinary tract infection, Siagian began experiencing severe insomnia, which he attributed to neurotoxic effects from the medication. Despite lacking a genetic predisposition for Fatal Familial Insomnia, his condition rapidly deteriorated, leading to a complete inability to sleep.

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YouTuber is about to find out. Now his name is Ricard and McCart is in his 40s and he's a tattoo artist living in Philadelphia and he has a couple of YouTube channels where he posts a lot of videos, mostly of him tattooing people. But one day in 2015, his life changes and it starts when he gets a really bad urinary track infection. Like it's so bad he can barely work. But unfortunately he doesn't have health insurance. So he can't go to the doctor to get it looked at.

he can't afford it. Welcome to America. So he goes to his boss at his second job. I guess he has a couple of jobs. And he asks his boss for advice. And his boss recently had a UTI and he has some leftover antibiotics lying around that he never used. And so he gives these to Ricard. And so about a day later, bam, he starts feeling better. And so he keeps taking them. But then on the third night, he wakes up and something weird is going on. Everything seems to be shaking like there's an earthquake, but there isn't an earthquake. It's his head and his spine and his feet. Something is very off. But still, he summons the strength to go to work the next day, and he notices he's getting dizzy and his head feels foggy. Plus his body is getting weaker and

weaker. And so after work, he calls up his sister, who is some kind of nurse, and he tells her about the antibiotics that he's taking and she says, yeah, you're taking the right stuff, stuff that everyone takes. And so he's like, all right, and he keeps taking them and things continue to get worse. And pretty quickly, he's all messed up. Like his back burns all day and night, it feels like his kidneys are damaged, his joints are in pain, and suddenly he has tinnitus. Something definitely isn't right. But he keeps taking these pills hoping to get better,

and he keeps fighting these intense, painful symptoms. And it's some of the worst pain he's ever felt in his entire life. And after a period of time, finished the antibiotics. He's done, and his urinary track infection seems to be gone. So that's nice. But it's around this time that he realizes he isn't able to sleep anymore. Not like, oh, I barely got any sleep last night, but literally no sleep at all. He just lays there all night with really bad insomnia. And this lack of sleep is making him feel like shit all day. And if that isn't bad enough, suddenly, boom, his mom gets sick back in Indonesia, where he's originally from. And so

he has to take his sick ass and travel there and he flies from Philadelphia all the way over to Indonesia to see his mom to spend time with her before she passes. And while he's there, he's finally able to see a doctor to figure out what the hell is wrong with him. And so this doctor checks him over and basically says, yeah, you have insomnia. You need some sleep. And once you sleep, all this other stuff that's wrong with you will start to feel better. And then the doctor prescribes him some sedatives to help knock him So then Richard starts taking sedatives, but unfortunately they don't really work. No matter how many he takes, he's still not sleeping. I mean, if he's lucky on a good night, he'll get maybe two hours if he takes a bunch of them. And if you're like, Ray, why are you telling us this story about a guy who has trouble sleeping? Because here's the thing about not being able to sleep. Long-term sleep deprivation can actually cause you to get sick as your immune system starts failing and your organs sleep. Shut down. Once your organs start shutting down, you could actually die. So yeah, I mean, it's not very likely, but in theory not sleeping for long periods of time can actually unalive you. And that is what Ricard seems to be worried about. So anyway, a couple of months pass and it's now 2016. So Ricard's problem has been going on for a long time. I mean, he's still in Indonesia and at this point, he's so sick from lack of sleep that he's basically bedridden and therefore,

he's trapped there in Indonesia. So what does he do? He starts making YouTube videos again from his bed. Hi, I'm making this video hoping that there's some people out there are able to help me. And he decides to document everything that's going on with him. So it's been for a month and my body is deteriorating right now because my immune system is falling from not able to sleep. And by now, the sedatives that the doctor gave him have completely stopped working, no matter how many, he takes. And so Ricard starts begging the internet to help him figure out what's wrong with him. He even offers to allow doctors to experiment on him to see what's wrong.

Use me as your model as a guinea pig, you know, because I know I'm gonna be falling soon. I know I'm dying soon. And so he keeps not sleeping, living in pain, and posting videos trying to document everything that's going wrong with him. And he films himself as he tries to fall asleep and just as he's almost out, his body will react and like jerk himself awake. Even the skin on his face starts to die and flake off, according to him. And you can see the flakes on his videos here. And so Ricard still feels awful. I mean this chronic insomnia is killing him and his only goal at this point is to get some proper rest. And he's tried everything. He would give up his own legs just for an uninterrupted nap.

I will give away my two legs, two of legs from my tire. Cut it. Take it. As an exchange for sleeping, even though three hours a day, that's how desperate I am. And more months go by. And at this point, he's been bedridden in Indonesia for a whole year. And he's still documenting everything, and he's still begging the internet for help. I cannot sleep anymore. The medicine doesn't work anymore. The sleeping drugs is not help anymore, and it's only causing more damage.

But no matter what he does, there's still no hope. He's starting to give up. looking for an option, but I'm about to give up. To be honest, it's two months, everyday torture. And deep down, he knows his body is giving up on him. So he just lies there, in bed, in pain, while his body twitches 50 or so times a day. Sounds negative, but I want to die. But then, it gets worse. Because with insomnia like this, of course, your body is affected, but eventually, so is your mind. And poor Ricard, he starts going like his insomnia has been going on for so long that it's apparently giving him dementia

and it's starting to show. In his videos, all of a sudden, he's talking about things that just don't make sense. God, in this case, is just a person. I found out that actually his name is Enki. He came here to this planet before we are exists. And he's like filming in the dark, rambling about conspiracy theories. HIV is a phyrosis made by human, made by a drug smavia, designed to fill their mission. Then, at the end of 2016, he posts a YouTube video. And it's really dark, so it's hard to see. But this video is unfortunately his last one.

Because his body finally gives out, and he passes away in his bed. He apparently had what's called fatal insomnia, which is, an extremely rare neurological disease. I read that he had a really bad reaction to those antibiotics he took, which is also very rare, but which caused him peripheral neuropathy, which then led him to being in so much pain that he couldn't fall asleep. And his YouTube channel is still up, by the way.