- "Liver King" Brian Johnson built a huge following around lifestyle habits like raw meat and intense exercise.
- But behind his signature giant muscles was a $11,000 per month steroid cycle.
A fitness influencer known for attributing his bulging muscles to "primal" habits like eating raw testicles said he's very sorry he got caught using steroids and lying about them, according to an exclusive new interview with ABC News Studios' IMPACT x Nightline.
Brian Johnson, better known as the "Liver King," built a following of about 5 million viewers with social media posts highlighting an "ancestral" lifestyle routine of rigorous workouts, freezing showers, and eschewing shoes, shampoo, and vegetables.
Liver King attributed his hypermasculine physique and energy to nine "ancestral tenets" including a diet loaded with raw organ meat (which he conveniently sold in capsule form) before a leaked email revealed he was also supplementing with more than $11,000 of performance-enhancing drugs each month.
He came clean about his drug use on his YouTube channel in early December 2022 — then proceeded to post videos celebrating his newly "natty" lifestyle which looked exactly the same as his previous lifestyle, but this time without banned substances, according to the influencer.
Later that month, he was hit with a $25 million class-action lawsuit alleging that Johnson and his company misled customers with a "cult-like" practices. The alleged "marketing and advertising scheme" outlined in the complaint include promoting a "dangerous and life-threatening" raw meat diet, as well as Liver King's repeated insistence that his barrel chest and prominent arm veins were the result of healthy living and not highly-potent pharmaceuticals.
In his first mainstream media appearance since the controversy, Johnson, shirtless and with his signature bushy beard and dead animal hat, sat down for an interview with ABC News' Matt Gutman to discuss his regret that his steroid regimen was discovered.
"People say all the time, 'Oh, he just said he's sorry because he got caught.' Well yeah, that's completely true," Johnson said. "But I'm not really saying I'm sorry because I got caught, I'm saying I'm sorry because what I did was wrong, and this was the whole thing that brought it to light."
The Liver King said the drugs allowed him to "live a pretty kickass life," after he started taking them to combat feelings of inadequacy and exhaustion from compulsive exercise.
Steroid use can have life-threatening risks such as heart attack or stroke that have been well-documented in fitness communities such as elite bodybuilding. Experts have increasingly sounded the alarm that steroid use among fitness influencers is contributing to ongoing body image issues like muscle dysmorphia in both adults and youth.
The interview debuted May 11 in the latest episode of IMPACT x Nightline titled "Buff Enough: Liver King, Steroids, and the Male Body Image," which can be viewed in full on Hulu.