Leg-lengthening surgery changed my life. It cost $27,000 but I'm 5 inches taller and I feel more charismatic.

• Ibrahim Alğan paid $26,850 for surgery to make his legs longer.

• The 30-year-old told Insider he hated being short. "When you're short, you start 1-0 down."

• After his leg-lengthening surgery, Alğan founded a Turkey-based clinic offering the same procedure.

As a school counselor, Ibrahim Alğan's job was to help young people solve their problems. Yet he couldn't solve his own: a serious height complex.

Alğan, who's 30, is from the city of Adana in southern Turkey. He was 5-foot-2 and had strong feelings about his height.

"If you're shorter, people don't take you as seriously as a tall person," he told Insider. He said he felt he wasn't confident enough to help students at his school.

"I strongly believe that charisma is one of the must-have features in leadership," he said. "When you're short, you start 1-0 down."

Alğan said his colleagues made jokes about his height at least once a week. He said he felt tall people around him were more popular and had more opportunities. "They were more advantageous in both private relationships and recruitment," he said.

He said he'd never forgotten his first girlfriend telling him she wished he was taller, and said derogatory comments throughout his life "have always remained" like "a wound in me."

So he researched methods that claim to help a person grow taller. He took powders and pills to increase his height. He played basketball, swam, and jumped.

"I used to hang from a bar minutes before going to sleep almost every night," he said. "I used reflexological insoles that claimed to stimulate height increase."

Nothing worked, except for shoes with hidden heels that made him up to 3 inches taller. But they weren't enough. "It was like a false dream," he said. "Every time I took off my shoes, I was facing reality again.

"My obsession was getting bigger every day."

'My life purpose'

After two rounds of leg-lengthening surgery, Alğan added 5 inches to his height.