Luigi Mangione’s Reddit Account Lays Out His Laundry List of Ailments

A bad back wasn’t the only medical issue nagging Luigi Mangione.

The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson posted for years on Reddit about his laundry list of ailments, which included battles with brain fog, Lyme disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and general sleeping issues.

That Reddit page also detailed how his back problems—formerly a minor nuisance for the one-time high school wrestler and soccer player—had exploded into a debilitating injury after a hard fall while surfing in Hawaii in 2022.

The 26-year-old’s Reddit posts go back years, with him writing that his “brain fog” worsened during his college years and made his studies at the University of Pennsylvania all-the-more difficult.

“It’s absolutely brutal to have such a life-halting issue,” he wrote of the fog in a post. “The people around you probably won’t understand your symptoms—they certainly don’t for me.”

There’s been scrutiny about Mangione’s medical history given the accusations—that he traveled to shoot an insurance CEO dead on a Manhattan sidewalk, leaving behind cryptic clues that implied the killing was a targeted one—against him.

One of Mangione’s posts was in a subreddit for people who struggled with irritable bowel syndrome. He wrote there that he’d undergone testing for the condition, which was covered by Blue Cross Blue Shield. The New York Times reported that this post was Mangione’s only reference to insurance coverage on his Reddit account.

While his health struggles appeared particularly vast for a man his age, those close to him have suggested that it was complications from a back surgery in the summer of 2023 that caused him the most discomfort.

Mangione posted online that his back caused him pain when he sat down and that he suffered from numbness in his groin and bladder.

An account for Mangione on X, which has been dormant since the summer, has a cover photo that includes an X-ray with screws in a lower spine. That very well may be Mangione’s own X-ray, as friends confirmed he underwent a spinal fusion surgery that required such measures.

Mangione’s posts suggested the surgery was initially a success. He wrote that within days he stopped needing pain meds and he was able to sit, stand, and walk without issue once again

“The surgery wasn’t nearly as scary as I made it out to be in my head, and I knew it was the right decision within a week,” he wrote on Reddit.

However, reports that cite those close to Mangione have said that the back pain returned and was the catalyst for his transformation.

“Spoke with a source that had a lot of friends that went to high school with Luigi Mangione,” Jack Mac, of Barstool Sports, posted on X. “What keeps coming up is a back surgery that ‘changed everything’ for him and he went ‘absolutely crazy.’”

What drove Mangione to allegedly carry out a cold-blooded murder hasn’t been determined by authorities. It’s possible even Mangione’s closest loved ones don’t have insight into his mental state in the weeks leading up to the Dec. 4 slaying.

Those close to Mangione said he’d gone “radio silent” over the summer, with concerned tweets from loved ones—tagging Mangione’s X account—appearing to confirm that he’d cut off communications with family and friends, including a pal who’d planned to have Mangione in his wedding.

“Hey man I need you to call me,” one friend wrote. “I don’t know if you are okay or just in a super isolated place and have no service. But I haven’t heard from you in months. You made commitments to me for my wedding and if you can’t honor them I need to know so I can plan accordingly.”

In October, another friend wrote: “Hey, are you ok? Nobody has heard from you in months, and apparently your family is looking for you.”

There were other signs of concern online. In addition to reviews for books about back pain, Mangione once wrote in a Goodreads review of the Unabomber’s manifesto that “violence is necessary” when “other forms of communication fail.”

He gave the manifesto four of five stars. A detailed review pointed out that the infamous domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski was a “violent individual” who harmed “innocent people” and was “rightfully imprisoned.” However, he made clear that he believes violence is sometimes the only answer to the world’s issues.

“Reads like a series of lemmas on the question of 21st century quality of life,” his review said. “It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies. But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.”