Alex Murdaugh testifies he looked loved ones in the eye while scamming them

Lying double-murder suspect Alex Murdaugh admitted Friday that he would sometimes pop more than 60 pills a day — while also looking his loved ones in the eye as he lied to and stole millions from them.

The 54-year-old disgraced South Carolina legal scion told his trial that “opiates gave me energy” — and that some days he would take around 2,000 milligrams of oxycodone mixed with Oxycontin, with each pill being about 30 milligrams.

Asked if that meant he took 60 pills a day, the disbarred lawyer admitted, “There were days where I took more than that.”

“First thing I would do would take pills,” he admitted. “Whatever I was doing, it made it more interesting.”

Still, the addiction made him “physically, physically sick,” including “intestinal issues” where he couldn’t “control” himself from “diarrhea like throw up.”

He said he’d tried to self-detox “dozens, dozens, if not hundreds” of times. “It’s so many, I cannot tell you,” he said.

Even so, he denied saying the previous day that it made him “paranoid,” which was one of his justifications for lying about the night his wife, Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, were shot dead.

He said his immediate family knew about the addiction — including his slain wife and son, the latter of whom was nicknamed the “little detective” for not letting up on his dad.

His wife found a bag of pills the month before the murders, he admitted, with Paul texting him about it.

However, he denied that it was anything unusual ahead of the slayings — because it had happened “a number of times” over the years.

“This battle that I had with addiction, it had been going on for years — years — and so they had been watching me like a hawk for years,” he said.

The May text from his son was “just one occurrence where I let them down,” he said, saying his surviving son, Buster, 26, had also found his stash of drugs before.

“It was just an ongoing battle for me.”

Murdaugh said his addiction was not the only thing he hid from clients — admitting again to stealing millions from “people I cared about, still care about a lot, that I loved, and still love.”

“I would have had plenty of conversations where I did look them in the eye,” he said of his many victims.

“Every single client, I looked them in the eye, and I believe that the people that I stole money from for all those years trusted me,” he said on his second day of cross-examination.

“Good people, fine people, upstanding people. They trusted me, every single one of them,” he said.

He admitted it was “correct” that in 2019 — the year his now-deceased son was accused of a drunken boat crash that killed teen Mallory Beach — he stole $3.7 million from clients and his family firm.

That continued for years despite him earning hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in bonuses on top of his base salary of $125,000.

“I think I was selfish, and I think I just took the money,” he said, blaming it on his addiction.

“They’re all real people. They’re all good people. They’re all people that I care about. And a lot were people that I love.

“And I did wrong by them,” he said.

“When you’re doing the things wrong I was doing, you find all sorts of ways of justifying it,” Murdaugh said.

His latest confession came the day after he admitted in court to lying to everyone about being in the dog kennels with his wife and son just moments before they were gunned down on June 7, 2021.

State prosecutor Creighton Waters said it was just the latest example of how Murdaugh lies when “confronted with facts” he “can’t deny.”

“So we can agree that law enforcement, the prosecution and so many of your friends and family heard for the first time your story about the kennels yesterday after all these weeks of testimony?” Waters asked.

“Yes, I agree with that,” Murdaugh said.

Still, Murdaugh had tearfully testified Thursday that although he lied about his movements that day he “didn’t shoot my wife or my son any time. Ever.”

“When you’re doing the things wrong I was doing, you find all sorts of ways of justifying it,” Murdaugh said.

He instead broke down on the stand, with snot rolling down his face, as he recalled the sight of his wife and son dead when he supposedly found the bodies later that night.

“Paul was so bad,” he said of seeing his son’s face down after being “done the way he’s done.”

“His head the way his head was … I could see his brain laying on the sidewalk,” he said in gripping testimony.

Murdaugh faces 30 years to life if convicted of the murders, which he has always denied.

Even if he’s cleared, he is expected to spend decades in prison for roughly 100 other crimes he’s been charged with, including stealing from clients and trying to set up his own murder in an insurance scam.