YouTuber Max Gilardi Announces, Then Pauses, Plan to Pursue Assisted Death in Switzerland

Max Gilardi, the 38-year-old animator behind the YouTube channel hotdiggedydemon, told his audience during a livestream Saturday that he's been considering traveling to Switzerland for assisted suicide. By Sunday, he'd walked it back.

Gilardi has more than 2.1 million subscribers and nearly 500 million views, built largely on animated parodies of franchises like Five Nights at Freddy's and My Little Pony. He said a 2024 fibromyalgia diagnosis has made that work increasingly hard to sustain.

"I'm tired all the time. I spend a lot of my time lying down. I get a lot of bad pain in all my joints and my muscles, ankles, shins, hands, knees, hips, neck. I have a lot of difficulty sleeping," Gilardi said on the stream, according to both the New York Post and Times Now.

He also described unexplained symptoms, including drooling and difficulty speaking, that he said doctors haven't been able to diagnose. Fibromyalgia itself is a real, recognized condition marked by widespread chronic pain and fatigue, but Gilardi's account suggests there's more going on that hasn't been pinned down.

Then there's the money. "There's nothing more expensive than living," Gilardi said, pointing to mounting medical bills as a driving factor in his thinking.

"After considering every option I could think of, ultimately that solution has taken the form of doctor-assisted euthanasia," he said, calling it a "natural conclusion" to a cycle he described bluntly: "My existence has become one where I suffer and barely scrape by so I can continue to sustain an existence where I barely scrape by and suffer."

He got the Swiss law wrong

Gilardi said during the livestream that euthanasia is legal in Switzerland. It isn't. Swiss law prohibits euthanasia, meaning a doctor or other person cannot directly administer a lethal dose to end someone's life.

What Switzerland does permit, under specific legal conditions, is assisted suicide, where the person seeking to die must perform the final act themselves, typically by self-administering medication provided through an organization like Dignitas. The distinction carries real legal weight. Both the New York Post and Times Now flagged this in their coverage.

This isn't a small technicality. Switzerland has built an entire legal framework around requiring the individual to act on their own, precisely because direct euthanasia by a second party is illegal there. Anyone citing Switzerland as a euthanasia destination is describing a country that doesn't offer that.

The walk-back

The reaction to Gilardi's livestream was swift. According to Times Now, he posted on X on Sunday saying he was pausing any immediate plans: "Decided I'm not thinking clearly, will reassess."

A man in visible distress made a public statement about ending his life, got a wave of response from his audience, and pulled back within roughly 24 hours. He hasn't announced any change to his health situation or financial circumstances, both of which remain exactly as dire as he described them Saturday.

What's actually unresolved

Gilardi's underlying complaints—chronic pain, a fibromyalgia diagnosis, unexplained neurological symptoms, and financial strain from ongoing medical care—haven't been addressed by his walk-back. He said doctors "still can't seem to explain" some of what he's experiencing. That's a medical mystery, not a solved problem.

Neither source reported any additional statement from Gilardi's doctors, any diagnosis beyond fibromyalgia, or any updated financial detail. There's no indication he has taken concrete steps toward contacting a Swiss assisted-dying organization, and given his own admission that he wasn't "thinking clearly," it's unclear whether Saturday's announcement reflected a firm plan or a moment of crisis aired live to an audience of millions.

What happens next depends on whether Gilardi gets a clearer medical picture, and whether the platform he built over a decade of animation work can support him through a chronic illness that shows no sign of easing.