He was the most tattooed individual in Brazil until he decided to have the ink erased from 95% of his body.
Leandro de Souza has previously had two laser sessions in an effort to remove more than two decades of tattoos, the first of which occurred when he was a young adolescent.
The 35-year-old photographer, who converted to evangelicalism and now lives in the Brazilian border city of Bagé, near Uruguay, opted to erase almost 170 tattoos.
“I did the first one when I was 13,” de Souza told the Brazilian online news site G1. “The first ones were very much about the idolatry of the time.”
The tattoos were inspired by popular rock bands at the time, including Nirvana, Guns N’ Roses, and Metallica.
After divorcing his wife ten years ago, De Souza’s life went a downward spiral.
He tried cocaine for the first time and then mixed ecstasy, LSD, and alcohol for nine years after his divorce from the mother of his ten-year-old son.
“I couldn’t stand the life I was living anymore,” he told me. “I was an attraction at (events I attended), and it felt like a circus animal.”
When De Souza visited a shelter and was exposed to evangelism, he gained a new perspective on life.
“The first step in everything in life is to accept that you can’t do it alone, that you are an addict, that you are a drug addict,” de Souza went on.
“And I did it; I entered Bagé’s municipal shelter. Within a week, a lady had referred me and began to evangelise me.”
Two years ago, De Souza preached to “parents and children in homes that are in prisons” in an attempt to convert faith.
Franco da Rocha, a tattoo parlour in São Paulo, learnt about de Souza’s life-changing experience on April 14, which also happened to be his birthday and one year without drugs or smokes. He hasn’t consumed an alcoholic beverage in over three years.
De Souza is still expected to attend six additional classes, each lasting 30 to 40 minutes. They are scheduled every three months.
“It hurts a lot more than doing it,” he told me. “It hurts three times as much as doing it.” Even with anaesthesia, the procedure is extremely painful.
