I know we've talked about this before, but

[Artiste]

How come a smart person sells dope for criminals ?

Can that be asked too ??

Hugs!

[optom3]

A couple of other possibilities.

I myself, when taking prescriptions meds, especially painkillers, have occasionally forgotten when I took the last dose. So maybe he just lost track.

And it's possible that he felt depressed enough that his attitude became careless. Not like he was trying to hurt himself, but more like he just didn't care enough to pay attention.

I agree,it is all too easy to just take too many or a bad combination.Sometimes when I have had a migraine on top of the bi polar and insomnia on top.I just carry on taking meds.The problem is some of the depression meds actually fog your brain so much,you literally blank out and forget all the other meds you have taken.So you take something else.you become more groggy but you are not actually aware of how befuddled you are.
You are depressed in pain and desperate for sleep.
I have now reached the stage wher I literally write down what I have taken and what time.It is the only way I know I can be safe,if I am having a really bad day.
I have mixed so much in the past I think I have been incredibly lucky that I am still here.
The other problem is that the exhaustion also makes you groggy.
If I am having a diabolical day then my husband takes my meds and gives them to me at approprate intervals,so there can be no risk of me taking too much.
It really all does become a vicious cycle.
I would consider myself a reasonably intelligent woman,I have 2 masters and of of them is actually in bio/clinical chemistry.So I know exactly what different drugs do.Despite this I have come pretty close to taking way too many.That is why I keep a record now.
Heath probably had too many different drugs in his system.It literally can be just one extra pill,depending on the half life of everything else.It does not even need to be a lot of pills just a combination which are still present in your system due to longer half lifes,and that 1 extra tips the balance.As I said before soem of them befuddle your brain so even the brightest human loses track of what they have taken.
I hate thinking about it,but it has made me significantly more careful of what I take  so bless him,he is stiil doing good even now.

[Artiste]

Merci optom !

You say:
    it has made me significantly more careful of what I take...       
....

Optom:
may I say that I am happy that you are wise in being careful in taking medication !!

Maybe we can all replace pain with happiness and hugs !!  ??



Somehow? May I say, wish and hope... and find ways to do so !!  I always wish that for myself, and may I wish it be so for you too and others.

You have a Midas Touch which will make you seek ways to be helpful and happy !! I am so glad that you  make me happy! Tu es comme cette rose, si belle... de pensées et de coeur !!

Au revoir,
hugs!

[BelAir]

How can a smart person have put SIX major drugs into his system? 

This is a piece I get really stuck on.  Any words of insight?  Or commiseration?

I don't visit this particular forum very much (some sort of denial/compartmentalization/coping strategy all rolled into one), but I was having this same somewhat similar thought today...  (like, "how?  how on earth did it happen? !!!)

 

[BelAir]

Oh Elle.

(((Elle)))

The one insight I gained from this whole disaster is that meds stay a lot longer in your system than I would have thought possible. I honestly didn't know that they can stay in your system over days and build up on another.

Wanna know my personal theory on what happened to Heath (and it's not more than that)? I think he changed to different meds after his return to the US. Maybe one day still taking what he had taken in London, the next day switching to another set of meds, hoping they would work better and not knowing that what he had taken the day before was still in his system and that the stuff could add up.

Still, it leaves the question why he took that stuff at all. Insomnia? Well, it happens to a lot of people, and I wouldn't interpret anything into it, if it were the only pills he had taken. Painkillers? Maybe the cold/supposed walking pneumonia he's said to have had at that point.
But anti-anxiety drugs? And the combination of those three types of meds? I'm sorry, but that doesn't speak of a person who is in synch with themselve. And that's one of the saddest things in this whole horrible story.

 

fwiw, I know lot's of "normal" (or as close to normal as you can be in this day and age) people who take anti-anxiety medications.  Not to sound dumb, but maybe it's a cultural thing.  you complain to your doctor about a particular emotional problem and lickety split you get an ant-anxiety medication?  sort of like an antibiotic...  (definitely not condoning it, but I think it's perhaps more "normal" in some cultures/areas than others...)

i guess what I am trying to say is that I don't necessarily think it means he wasn't in synch with himself.

your theory, chrissi, about switching drugs upon his arrival to the U.S. is interesting, and actually, quite logical, imo.  thanks.

[BelAir]

ps - so I guess I am feeling right now that it happened because shit happens.  good things happen, bad things happen, so goes the circle of life....

and I guess I will be eternally sad that this shitty thing happened to him...

(I am not sad, about my eternal sadness, just sort of acknowledging it... thanks for listening...)

[ednbarby]

I know several people who take all of the same drugs regularly, just like him.  I know because they all told me at some point shortly thereafter that they are taking the same things and were really freaked out by what happened to him.

I honestly believe that my mother truly died of an accidental overdose.  Her death was ruled as heart failure, but without an autopsy or toxicology study, we'll never really know.  I do know that she was cremated shortly after she died, which was her wish.  Then, a few days later, when we were packing up her things, we found a whole grocery bag full of prescription medications, and all recently prescribed by the same doctor and from the same pharmacy.  Among them were two different types of painkillers (Soma and something else), Valium, an MAOI-type anti-depressant, and an antibiotic because she had chronic bronchitis.

We thought about going after the doctor for negligence, but we had no way of proving that that was what caused her death, and she was not the least bit forthcoming with her medical records.  We even had a doctor friend write a letter to the AMA asking them to require her to cough them up.  She still never did.  (Or they didn't even bother to make her - they protect their own.)

In any event, it's just one of those things that just happens.  Doesn't matter how smart you are or how much you want to live.  I had talked to my mother what turns out to be, we think, the night she died.  She told me she felt awful, hadn't been sleeping, and just couldn't seem to get better from her current bout with bronchitis.  I told her to please go to the doctor on Monday (this was Saturday), and that if she really felt bad the next day, to go to the ER (there weren't those walk-in clinics so much in 1992).  She said she would.

When you feel like hell and you can't sleep, and then you haven't slept right for a while and so your mind is not your own, it's easy to forget when you took the last one or to just take another because the one you know you took an hour ago just ain't doing the job.

What makes me the saddest about both my Mom and Heath was that they were alone when they died.  The fact that they were alone, really, is why they died.  I was in Ohio and my Mom was in New York.  I was worried about her, but not worried enough to call my brothers who lived in the same town as she and ask them to make sure she got to a doctor and was OK.  Of course I've always regretted that.  But hindsight is 20-20.  I knew she was sick and felt awful, but I didn't know she had all those different drugs and was probably taking them all.

[Ellemeno]

{{{{{Barb}}}}} and {{{{{Barb's mom}}}}}

That is so sad.  The whole pharmacological world is so complex, the good substances can do, and the bad; the clarity and the confusion.

[ednbarby]

{{{{{Barb}}}}} and {{{{{Barb's mom}}}}}

That is so sad.  The whole pharmacological world is so complex, the good substances can do, and the bad; the clarity and the confusion.

Thanks, Elle.

There is nothing fair in this world, and there is nothing safe in this world.  (Forgive me for borrowing that one from you, Billy Idol.)  Even the cleverest and biggest-hearted among us can fall down sometimes.

[louisev]

The biggest problem with these new prescription drugs that are being prescribed so widely is that some of them are extremely slow to clear your system (sometimes days) and they do have alarming combined effects.  In fact, there are some drugs which, while they are supposed to be relaxant or narcotic in action, when combined with alcohol become stimulants.  Some of the most common drugs (i.e. prozac, ambien, zoloft) doctors don't really know a lot about them, or their side effects.  They are actually rather exotic in how they affect the body.  One of the reasons why I doggedly maintain an attachment to the one arthritis drug I take is because because its risks and side effects are very well known, and the only long term side effect from it is possibly impaired kidney function, monitorable with blood tests.  I avoid narcotics at all cost, because they are infamous for combining with other drugs to create toxicity.

The lethal effects of drugs that cause accidental overdoses is not new - it is just that there are so many drugs now, and so much of a culture of prescription in the medical community, that death is becoming more common.  I saw one article that came out not too long after Heath's death saying that one health authority estimated the number of accidental overdose fatalities in the US last year alone was 10,000.  Now THAT - is criminal.