Posted on 02/06/2008 12:09:42 PM PST by Berlin_Freeper
The lethal cocktail of drugs that killed actor Heath Ledger two weeks ago could be sitting in your medicine cabinet.
The medications — identified Wednesday as oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, alprazolam, temazepam and doxylamine — are the generic names for the painkillers OxyContin and Vicodin, the anti-anxiety drugs Valium and Xanax and the sleep aids Restoril and Unisom.
Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the New York City medical examiner, who conducted the autopsy, said Wednesday that the cumulative effects of these combined prescription medications killed the 28-year-old Australian-born actor.
"The danger is that all these drugs have similar side effects and they tend to add up," said Dr. Manny Alvarez, managing editor of health for FOXNews.com.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Why would a 29 year old need OxyContin and Vicodin? ....I seriously doubt he had any recent surgeries or injuries that would have required this level of pain medication. The doctor that prescribed these drugs needs to be investigated.
Oh, no.... You're not pinning this one on me.
So, can I jump to conclusions yet? Or must I still assume "accidental" overdose of six different drugs at once?
Say, since this “lethal cocktail” was good enough for a Hollywood Star, do you suppose the weenie judges would approve it for executions?
“The lethal cocktail of drugs that killed actor Heath Ledger two weeks ago could be sitting in your medicine cabinet.”
this is like saying ‘the combination of the bullets in the gun killed him’
neither the gun, or the bullets or the ‘combination of drugs’ kill anyone. someone with access to them makes bad choices about them. those choices are the cause of death, not the drugs.
He likely was not following the proper regimen for those drugs. If you have a bunch of pills and just take them willy-nilly, that often has bad effects.
What was a presumably fairly healthy young man doing having 2 different prescriptions for strong pain killers.
(let's try that again, with feeling.)
Hey now! I didn't "allow" it, it was just a juggling accident.
QUICK lock the closet. those guns will run out and kill you, your family, friends, the neighbors..... those E-V-I-L guns. Something needs to be done to keep control of those Wicked Weapons/sarc off/
You know, if I had some OxyContin in my medicine cabinet I think I’d know that already.
In fact, if I had any OxyContin in the house I would already have taken it all as the results rolled in last night so either way there isn’t any.
For that matter, overdosing on Tylenol can kill you pretty darned dead, too.
That bastard Heath Ledger put that hydrocodone in my medicine cabinet???
I did misspeak, yes. But at the same time, I just don’t get young people having access to so much medication.
While those were all (except for the Unisom) prescription medications, that doesn’t mean that they were his prescriptions. He had the money, and probably the connections, to get whatever he wanted, drug-wise.
And Ledger’s family issued a statement that they hoped his death would be a warning to others that this could happen to them. Strange, but Anna Nichole whats-her-name’s leeches, I mean family, said the same thing following her ‘accidental’ death, and it didn’t teach Ledger a damn thing. This folks don’t think that life applies to them, and that’s at least a full half of their problem.
F***k off.
Twenty-eight is not so young when it comes to painkillers and anxiety relaxers. But you are right to be uneasy since it seems like pharmaceuticals are a way of life for many, many people. You have to wonder how the human brain can handle everything that is thrown at it these days.
NEW YORK -- The medical examiner has concluded that actor Heath Ledger's death was an accident, and the result of the abuse of prescription medications. Now, the Drug Enforcement Administration is going to investigate how he got them....
The official said the death was ruled an accidental overdose not because he took a large number of pills at once but because of the cumulative effect that taking numerous drugs had on his system.....
"Heath's accidental death serves as a caution to the hidden dangers of combining prescription medication, even at low dosage," the statement said.
I will not discuss this further with you. Now have some respect for the dead.
I think I took a painkiller once for a toothache.
Having been a 24/7 caregiver for a cancer patient with BPD and a few other disorders, I know the value of pain killers and anti-anxiety drugs. Ironically, Hospice’s initial reaction to the anti-anxiety medication my friend was on was that they probably wouldn’t cover that. I begged. I said if you don’t approve anything else, please approve that. They did approve it. But that was an end of life situation.
My own mom had degenerative arthritis in her back and I watched her crawl on the floor in so much pain. In her attempt to wean herself off medication, she drank herself to death instead, so people will find their own poison.
I just think young people are being encouraged to believe that they shouldn’t be expected to “make it” through any pain because there are drugs that will take care of the pain for them. And they don’t have a freaking clue how addictive some of these drugs can be.
So it seems to me that it comes down to physician responsibility, even though there is nothing to prevent someone with chronic pain going physician shopping or from one to the other just to get meds.
I don’t know what the answer is.
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