It’s probably just a phrasing thing, Cluricaun.
Wow, he took two types of painkillers, two types of tranquilizers and two types of sleeping pills. I wonder if a reasonable dose of each of these, taken all at once, would be enough to kill somebody?
I suppose if he’d taken the whole bottle of each of these they would have declared it a suicide.
Yes, the actual CNN story does say “accidental overdose,” but the big headline on the website’s homepage had “accidental abuse.”
I thought doxylamine was an antihistamine or decongestant? I know it’s in a cold medicine I was taking recently and it was the supposedly non-drowsy type. Some people had said he was also sick at the time.
I am curious if he got all those from the same doctor and if the doctor said don’t take them all together. Or one painkiller/tranquilizer didn’t work so they gave him a different one and he wasn’t supposed to take them all at the same time and either no one told him, he didn’t listen when they said don’t take them together or he just got so desperate for sleep that he ignored it?
The sad thing is accidental or not, the word of mouth will be that he died of a drug overdose and that’s all people will remember.
Heath Ledger:
Oxycodone
Hydrocodone
Valium
Xanax
Restoril
Doxylamine
Elvis Presley:
Codeine
Morphine
Quaaludes
Valium
Diazepam
Placidyl
Amytal
Nembutal
Carbrital
Demerol
Elavil
Avental
Valmid
Sinutab
Elvis by eight.
Or another possibility is he could have been prescribed the medications by different doctors and didn’t let them all know what other meds he was taking, so they wouldn’t have been able to warn him of any dangerous interactions between them.
Well, he was a bonehead then for not realizing himself that taking two types of painkillers, two types of tranquilizers, and two types of sleeping pills simultaneously might in fact be an issue. Hell, I don’t even take Aspirin if I already had a Neo Citron or something.
It’s all in the constitution. Mine is iron-clad. I could take what he took and never bat an eye. You give that combo to Elvis Presley or Jeff Conaway, they’d be wondering when they were gonna get the good drugs. But if you’re not a steady druggie, it’s all over. Remember, just because they were all in his system, there’s no knowing what the amounts were. These things stay in your system for days, if not weeks. He might’ve been on the oxy on one day and restoril a night or two later, then two weeks later gone to a doc because of pain from the flu and sleeplessness, complained the other stuff wasn’t getting the job done and been given another drug to try instead. Meanwhile, can’t sleep? Try this one instead. Over the course of a week, you’ve got a cocktail in your bloodstream without ever having gotten high or abused the drugs. Unfortunately, this isn’t the way people are ever going to process the information being reported now, and he’s doomed to carry the label of tragic drug abuser forever. But as one who is forced to use a lot of controlled substances legally and responsibly, I am frustrated by the conclusions that will be jumped to like Olympian champions.
Now I know this is what killed him. I’m not denying that. I’m just saying that the fact that it did, when so many say he showed no indications of being an abuser, says to me that it was an undeniably accidental overdose, and further indicates he was not a regular or longterm user of said drugs.
Now, if it comes out in a couple days that the press is giddy over finding pictures of him downing handfuls of pills and washing it down with Jack Daniels, I’ll feel like an idiot. But that’s what it’d take to convince me any differently.
RIP, Heath.
Ever been an insomniac? As you can’t sleep and the sleep medications someone gave you to help you sleep don’t work, you start to have “great” ideas like "well, maybe if I combine the Ambian with a jigger of tequila I’d fall asleep. And in your “I can’t think because I haven’t sleep more than four hours over the past week and a half” state - this makes good sense. You go a little insane, and you start to NEED the sleep and be willing to risk near anything to get it.
What the hell is Neo Citron?
This. Although apparently only available in Canada. Who knew?
Ah, NeoCitran sounds more like a medicine. Neo Citron sounds like a new vodka beverage.
What singular and Dangerosa said. It had been established by him in an interview that he was having trouble sleeping. Insomnia can make you a bit wacky and affect your thinking processes. Go without sleep long enough and you can hallucinate or have a psychotic break. He didn’t have to be a bonehead, he just had to be desperate for sleep that he made a poor judgement of what he thought might be safe to take or maybe he was so tired he forgot what he took and when, and as singular said he may not have taken them all at the same time but they accumulated.
Could we stop accusing the guy of being an idiot or a druggie? We don’t know the exact circumstances of what happened. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and let it be an unfortunate accident.
Wasn’t he supposed to have been prescribed medicine while he was in London? Contraindicative drug interactions are a risk for anyone taking any meds. Throw in international travel, world-famous stardom (was he able to actually see a doctor in London? Or was a flu medicine prescription phoned in as an [irresponsible] favor to a star or his handlers?), and that default risk could easily be exacerbated, imho.
At this point, I think it is just as likely that his death will be seen as a cautionary tale about the safe and informed use of medicinal drugs, as opposed to just another self-destructive drug abuser.