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Reid Ewing opened up on his struggles with body dysmorphia and addiction to plastic surgery. The actor who plays Dylan Marshall, the on-and-off boyfriend of Sarah Hyland's Haley Dunphy on "Modern Family", wrote his personal journey with overcoming serious body image issues in a blog post on The Huffington Post.

"Body dysmorphic disorder is a mental illness in which a person obsesses over the way he or she looks. In my case, my looks were the only thing that mattered to me," the 27-year-old star said, adding that it started when he moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career.

Due to the lack of friends, "I'd sit alone in my apartment and take pictures of myself from every angle, analyzing every feature," he revealed. After a few years, he finally decided to get under the knife as he thought, "No one is allowed to be this ugly. It's unacceptable."

Ewing got his first procedure when he was 19 and got cheek implants based on the doctor's suggestion. "I genuinely believed if I had one procedure I would suddenly look like Brad Pitt," he said.

He was in so much pain and had to "wear a full facial mask for two weeks" during his recovery. "Afraid someone would find out I had work done, I took my dog and some supplies, left Los Angeles, and headed to Joshua Tree," he recalled.

"When the time came to take off the bandages, it was nothing like I had expected," the actor said. Even "after all the swelling finally went down, the results were horrendous. The lower half of my cheeks were as hollow as a corpse's," he explained.

"I went back to the doctor several times in a frenzy, but he kept refusing to operate on me for another six months, saying I would eventually get used to the change. I couldn't let anyone see me like this, so I stayed in complete isolation. When I went out, people on the street would stare at me, and when I visited my parents they thought I had contracted some illness."

"Unable to take this state of living," Ewing went to another doctor. "The next one I found was even less qualified, but I didn't care; I just wanted out of my situation," he said. He had a chin implant in hopes to fix the previous ones but it led to another problem.

"At this point I was 20 years old. For the next couple of years, I would get several more procedures with two other doctors. Each procedure would cause a new problem that I would have to fix with another procedure. Anyone who has had a run-in with bad cosmetic surgery knows this is true," he said, adding that he got the money from his acting. When he was "most deperate," he borrowed it from his parents and grandmother.

"Much of this was going on during the same time period I was shooting 'Modern Family.' Most of the times I was on camera were when I'd had the numerous implants removed and was experimenting with less-noticeable changes to my face, like injectable fillers and fat transfers. None of them last very long or are worth the money," he said.

"At the beginning of 2012, all the isolation, secrecy, depression, and self-hate became too much to bear. I vowed I would never get cosmetic surgery again even though I was still deeply insecure about my looks. It took me about six months before I was comfortable with people even looking at me."

He continued, "Of the four doctors who worked on me, not one had mental health screenings in place for their patients, except for asking if I had a history of depression, which I said I did, and that was that. My history with eating disorders and the cases of obsessive compulsive disorder in my family never came up. None of the doctors suggested I consult a psychologist for what was clearly a psychological issue rather than a cosmetic one or warn me about the potential for addiction."

Ewing decided to speak out after seeing his first doctor "on a talk show and then in a magazine article, giving tips on getting cosmetic surgery." Ewing's suggestion to those planning to go under the knife was, "Before seeking to change your face, you should question whether it is your mind that needs fixing."

He concludes, "Plastic surgery is not always a bad thing. It often helps people who actually need it for serious cases, but it's a horrible hobby, and it will eat away at you until you have lost all self-esteem and joy. I wish I could go back and undo all the surgeries. Now I can see that I was fine to begin with and didn't need the surgeries after all."

He added on Twitter, "So many people have contacted me via Twitter with supportive things to say.Really cool. I hope it helps people reevaluate their self-image."