Let’s suppose a an otherwise healthy 20-year-old with no history of health problems has a heart attack or stroke one day. What are the odds that this person was using illegal drugs?
345.7 : 1
I dunno. There can be concealed heart defects that give no symptoms except for a quick death one day. John Ritter had one of those.
I can’t imagine the purpose of this question except to speculate rather meanly on someone’s tragedy.
Less than 50%, IMHO. Congenital heart and brain abnormalities are probably more common.
I haven’t kept close track, but in the last 10 years I’ve been in a lot of death reviews, including that of young folks. Cerebral aneurysms and hypertrophic heart abnormalities were not infrequent findings. On other occasions, illicit drugs were found in other folks too.
I think heart attack isn’t the usual death from illegal drugs. Nor is stroke.
There are, as mentioned, congenital problems that can cause sudden death in young healthy adults; a childhood friend of mine died while jogging from undiagnosed cardiomyopathy.
Cocaine can be hard on the heart. The combination of drug use and a heart defect could be bad. I know of one heavy cocaine user who died in his early 30s where the cause was listed as heart disease. On the other hand I have a friend who doesn’t even drink and he had a stroke in his early 30s.
I just saw something about this on the news. A family started a charity that tries to get children checked out for these kinds of defects before something happens but fuck me if I can remember a single useful detail.