Online Reporter
RUNNING his eyes down the lengthy list of side effects linked to his dad’s medication, the penny finally dropped for Freddie Pritchard.
In the previous 18 months, the finance consultant had witnessed increasingly bizarre behaviour from his dad Bill.
Once a sensible and private retired maths teacher, he had become reckless, losing about US$400,500 to romance scammers, crashing his car and openly watching porn.
Now, Freddie finally understood why.
Freddie tells Sun Health how a side effect of a common prescription drug robbed his dad of his dignity – and warns others that their lives may have been similarly destroyed without them knowing.
“I didn’t think I’d be talking about my dad’s raging libido and terrible financial decisions but it’s really important,” says Freddie, who describes the extreme personality change he saw in his father back in the summer of 2016.
“At first I thought Dad was having a breakdown,” he adds.
“My brother was quite ill at the time, he had suffered a traumatic brain injury seven years before and prior to taking the medication Dad had been a devoted father, very protective and loyal.
“Dad’s behaviour changed so drastically that when he ran out of his own money to send to the scammers he managed to get some money out of my older brother.
“His actions were unthinkable – that was a rock bottom moment.”
Freddie’s parents separated amicably in 2006 and Bill was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, the progressive neurological condition which affects 166,000 people in the UK, three years later at the age of 55.
At the beginning of 2015 the retired teacher’s medication was switched to a dopamine agonist drug, something which imitates the action of “feel good” hormone dopamine with the aim of improving muscle control and helping the body move normally.
“He moved back to Lincolnshire and rang me up asking me to pay the removals fee,” says Freddie.
“I thought it was a bit odd and it all came pouring out – he told me his money was tied up in ‘investments’.”
According to a 2010 study of just over 3,000 patients with Parkinson’s, impulse control disorders can affect one in six sufferers.
These psychiatric disorders can cause hypersexuality, which Freddie describes as being “10 times hornier than you’ve ever been with no ability to resist those impulses”, describing the uncomfortable moment he walked downstairs to find his father openly watching pornography.
What’s more, it put Bill at risk of falling victim to romance scammers.
Tricked into thinking he was speaking to attractive young women who encouraged him to “invest” in non-existent get rich quick schemes, Bill had lost about £300,000 (about US$400,500) – a quarter of a million pounds of his own money, which included funds from his house sale when he finally divorced Freddie’s mum in 2015, plus £50,000 worth of credit card debits from cards taken out on his behalf.
“Looking back at Dad’s Skype chat history, it was an organised and coordinated scam and it was so simple,” says Freddie, from Watford, Herts.
“The scammers had sent a blanket, spam email to people, the type we all get, including my father.
“Their messages were so obviously bogus – when I found out what was going on I said: ‘Why would a woman half your age and out of your league be getting in touch Dad? They can’t even see your picture’.
“He just couldn’t understand and it was very sad.”
Doing his best to shut off Bill’s means of transferring any more money, Freddie took his father to his GP who did a dementia test which turned out to be negative.
“It was a couple of months before we figured out what was causing the behaviour change,” he says.
Noting his Dad was taking Rotigotine patches, a dopamine agonist medication, Freddie was stunned when he read the pamphlet listing the possible side effects.
“I went through that list going, okay, headaches, rashes, heart palpitations, low blood pressure, high blood pressure, weight loss, weight gain and there it was: impulsiveness, impulse control disorder,” he says.
“You Google it and read about losing the ability to assess, filter and reject impulses.
“That was the penny drop moment, it just made complete sense and it made me realise Dad had absolutely no control at all.
“The time lines married exactly, Dad went on Rotigotine in 2015 and his strange behaviour started in 2015.”
With his son figuring out the link, Bill came off the medication straight away and switched back to his old one but sadly, Freddie says the father he knew had gone.
“I don’t know if you can really go back after you’ve taken these powerful drugs that completely destroy your mind,” he explains.
“Dad hung on for another six years and he regressed into a totally unrecognisable, different person, it was just horrendous.
“He was a shadow of his former self and while the hyper sexuality element subsided, which made my life a lot easier, his impulsiveness never left him.
“I had to get Dad banned from driving because his impulsive behaviour made him so dangerous – he’d always been a really safe driver, who was very against speeding.
“He could still play golf and I had warned him not to drive a golf cart but one day he crashed it into the clubhouse.”
With his disease progressing, Bill went into a care home at the start of 2021 and died in hospital in July 2022, at the age of 68, after contracting pneumonia.
Freddie wants doctors to properly warn patients about taking these medications and to better monitor their side effects once they start – and he believes the drug companies who make the products should bear culpability too.
The financial consultant managed to get Bill’s credit cards written off and says he contacted global crime agency Interpol about his Dad’s scammers but didn’t hear back.
Above all, he is keen to stress, it isn’t about the money lost but the change in his father that robbed them of their remaining years together.
“I’m incredibly proud of Dad,” he says.
“He was a good teacher, he was a good man and he didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
“I think we’ll hear more and more of these stories, it’s absolutely devastating,” he adds.
“So many people will have never joined the dots – it’s highly distressing seeing these kinds of behaviours in our loved ones and knowing the reason for it could bring them peace and solace.” – Sun Club
