Heath Ledger's Death
 

"Mr. Heath Ledger died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine," the statement said. [Reuters - Feb.6]

So, it was not a suicide. None of the drugs were taken in excessive amounts. The combination of all of them in normal dosages was enough to do him in.

The evidence is that he simply really, really wanted to get some sleep. Doxylamine is Nyquil.

Cordially,

The poor guy.
I've been reading about him and waiting for the toxology report.

Isn't Doxylamine an antihistamine similar to Benadryl?


Maybe his docs needed to give him the heavy duty stuff like Seroquel -- or whatever would help someone really wound up get to sleep.
I miss Heath.

M.

I really wish they'd start going after some of these doctors that prescribe in lethal amounts :mad:

If you take your meds exactly as prescribed and they kill you, obviously, you were over-prescribed.

I feel so bad about his daughter :(

Barb

He might have been to a bunch of doctors who were not in communication wiht each other.

Such a shame.

M.


http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h...LpDIgD8UL5L3G1

Is anyone else bothered by the fact he had BOTH Oxycontin and Vicodin in his system? The nyquil has alcohol in it and that is a known drug magnifyer. I think he had NO business taking Oxycontin, if he was in THAT much pain he should NOT have been working period. It's the oxy that did him in I bet coupled with vicodin. :(

It makes me mad to think that dr's are going to be under more scrutiny then they are already. It's not fair to those of us in true chronic pain to have to be looked upon as abusers of our prescribed meds like they talked about on the news today. :(

Yes, Pam. You are right on.
I agree with you and find the whole business troublesome.

The US gov (DEA) is now looking into how he got the stuff -- if the prescriptions are in his name and so on.

Mari

It is definitely troubling that he had both medications in his system, but I think they have implied already he had them from different physicians by saying three were from Europe. I don't envy his family having to cope with his untimely death like this, but the after effects will be felt by more then just them and that bothers me. :(

Thanks for posting Mari, I was afraid that I would get flamed for sharing my thoughts, but that's what they are and I am glad you agree with me. That makes me feel a lot better. :)

Imo...
 

I don't think it was Nyquil...was it? Doxylamine is in Unisom sleep aid. And some people
get paradoxical excitation from antihistamines. Doxylamine is very sedating and has potential
to be very agitating.

What people do... and I used to field those calls is:
Take the OTC sleep aid.... wait a few minutes...nothing happens.

Rummage around in the house and find Valium (or another tranq) and take that.
Wait a few minutes, nothing happens...remember this was in the DAYTIME.

Rummage around some more...perhaps call ME up... by this point. ( I used to work midnights and
calls like this were very common).

Narcotics do cause agitation in some people..sometimes. Insomnia.
I haven't seen a report yet explaining the narcotic use for what kind of pain?

So he may have taking the narcotics, got agitated and then tried all the rest.
Benzos are respiratory depressants, and added up with the narcotics to depress his breathing reflex.

Once you are impaired with a strong drug, judgement become very poor and
one loses track of what one is doing. This is where sloppy doctors come in.
I suspect he had many meds from many doctors.. I can't see one doctor doing this...If so it is very unethical and dangerous to provide so much.

Dear mrsd,

Except for the children's version, all formulations of Nyquil contain doxylamine.

While I am sorry the Keith Ledger overdosed, I am most concerned that his death will be political capital for another DEA witch hunt. A year or so ago, the DEA discovered that retired coal miners in Appalachia were selling the Oxycontin they were prescribed for black lung, arthritis etc. to buy food. They busted seven doctors, adding to the magnetic appeal of Appalachia for the medical profession generally.

Cordially,

I agree with mrsd. The papers said it was Unisom. In my opinion that is what killed him. The only drug that wasn't given by a doctor.
Geez....all the guy wanted to do was sleep.....been there done that.

Nyquil has changed
 

considerably over the years. The formula now is radically different than it used to be.

It used to be 20% alcohol (40 proof). When they lowered it finally to 10% they changed the antihistamine to be stronger-- now doxylamine is in there. It never used to be. The old antihistamine was brompheniramine or chlorpheniramine. I don't recall which one. To keep it sleepy, and remove the alcohol it needed a more sedating antihistamine.

The decongestant part has undergone changes too. I am not going to go into that, as it is not necessary for this thread.

At one point in time Unisom was the only doxylamine product. Doxylamine used to be in the antinausea drug Bendectin, which was taken off the market. It was thought in the past to cause birth defects, but after 20 years, that seemed to be unprovable. (Bendectin also had Vit B6 -- which was just reapproved by the FDA for nausea in pregnancy in 50mg doses). So now doxylamine is appearing in other products more commonly.

You know honestly even I have different doctor's for the different medicines I take. But they all know exactly what else I take.

And my primary and my pharmacy watch everything I take.

I even double check anything I want to take over the counter with a specific
pharmacist I trust.

Donna

not to defend the dr's..but how many times have we been given an rx..and it doesn't work..so we get rx'ed something else...and we DO NOT throw away the old stuff?

i haven't read anything yet that says these rx's were from the same dr or that they were current rx's.

also...i think so many of us here are try and be very informed about we get rx'ed. he may not have been. may not even realized that since they were rx'ed..they shouldn't have been taken together. or that rx's and the OTC shouldn't be mixed...


just a thought....

Not the same for us as him
 

We have to remember that he wasn't just your average drug-consuming patient.

He was rich and influential. He could get anything, from any doctor, anywhere, anytime. So, even if his doctor did tell him he couldn't have oxycontin or oxycodone because he had a Vicadin prescription, he could just go to another doctor.

I'm sure he had only the best doctors, but he probably had one in LA, one in NYC, one or two or three in Europe, Australia, etc.

Things are different for the rich! [

You're right molly, he was rich and powerful on the upswing in his career, so he might have sought oxy from a different dr then he got the vicodin from. Still there will be repercussions from this, just wait, the fallout is just getting started. *sigh*

Wow. I looked up the a little bit about Virginian coal miners.
I have always felt that they should get more help than they do for their physical sacrifices that they make for the rest of us. Their work powers many of our electric plants across the country. We owe them much.

M.

Hi everyone,
 

I really would like to know what he was taking the Oxycontin for and the Vicoden. For RSD they do give the Oxy and then sometimes Vicoden if they need it along for in between the other meds.

My thing is with Oxycontin. I have seen so much bad around here from it that I have negative feelings about it anyway. You watch tv and you hear of 70 year old people robbing drugstores for it that have never been in trouble. You see teenagers dying from using it in other ways.

When people tell me they are on it I cringe. I have seen a 65 year old woman get so addicted to it that she started Dr. shopping. I have seen 2 sisters around here both addicted to it and are a mess. I saw a friend lose her job over it.

This is just my opinion but I worry about people using Oxycontin. Again, I would like to know as someone else says, why he was on it.

As far as Drs. Most of us I think let our Drs. know if we are going to other Drs. and have our records and test sent back to our main one. Me, I have the same Dr. I have had for almost 18 years and my pharmcist for over 12 years. IF we stick with the same ones we don't have to worry about being lumped with the Dr. shoppers and switching druggist.

I am on Methadone for pain and I don't worry about it like I do the Oxycontin. I was given Oxycontin a few years back and after all of the things started coming out, I quit it after only about a weeks use of it.

Ada

here are some data...
 

from 2003 diversion statistics:

http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs10/10550/index.htm

It gives a breakdown by region.

Right now because of the questionable drug detailing of OxyContin (doctors were told to use high doses with no serious side effects), some states are suing Purdue. Michigan and Kentucky were the highest diversion states at one time.
Michigan has a very high rate of drug abuse, Dilaudid at one time was the premier drug. Michigan had the highest diversion rate of this, when my husband sat on a Federal Grand Jury and heard all the cases of podiatrists diverting this drug. That was about 30 yrs ago, and the drug abuse continues, only the name of the drug changes with the times.
http://www.ncsl.org/programs/health/oxycontin.htm

The 160mg dosage form of Oxy was taken off the market because of diversion/abuse.

When Heath passed away, I saw some interviews with other actors who
worked with him, who stated that Heath had "problems" and overused drugs.
I tend to think this is just a sad drug overuse/abuse situation, like Anna Nicole Smith.

I want to know that too Ada, WHY on earth was he taking oxy? I have heard it's like synthetic herione, in my mind you'd have to be in the kind of pain I was in after nearly dying in a motorcycle accident...To me that kind of gut wrenching, back breaking pain-in that situation I might consider letting them give me oxy, but morphine did me just fine and I didn't get addicted. :p

I can't imagine that young man was in that level of pain you know? People toy around with oxy recreationally, no matter what they say, Heath might have been trying to self-medicate for some other problem and just got a Dr. to go along for the ride...Bet that prescribing dr is feeling horrible at this point. :(

I hope it comes out as to why he was given Oxy, vicodin I can understand, that treats all kinds of pain, but what I want to know is what strength he had and WHY He had both medications? That's just fishy to me, sounds like he was dr shopping and one didn't know what the other was RX'n. :(

Here's the problem I am having.

When my office colleague OD'd in October, the hospital ruled it accidental.
But the rommmate told me that the bottles were empty, looking like the colleague had taking everything.
Then the colleague told me that he had intended on not waking up.

How do the drs determine if something is accidental or not? Do they generally lean with "accidental" for some reason??

In this case, "accidental" led to him getting inappropriate/inadequate care even months later.

M.

wouldn't seem that insurance companies get involved and order a more detailed review of the evidence?
Bobby

The Illegal Drugs Police Industry
 

I am sorry that Keith Ledger overdosed. However, he is another casualty of the drug wars. The criminalization of drugs has ruined medicine and created jobs worth hundreds of billions of dollars for criminals and cops. Virtually every crime committed involves illegal drugs, as finance, facilitation, cause, or purpose. If narcotics weren't treated like radioactive plutonium, perhaps the drug industry would have invented by now an easy-to-use contra drug for people who overdose. At least there would be more information out there about the effects of mixing controlled substances. Believe it or not, what they are trying to develop is a narcotic analgesic that blocks the pain but isn't "fun". This despite the fact that changing the perspective of the patient is one of the reasons that narcotics work for pain. The development of the entire NSaid class of drugs was sparked by the interest of Big Pharma in providing doctors with an analgesic that they could prescribe for pain that was not a narcotic. Their analgesic action is vastly inferior but, hey, they aren't narcotics.

Cordially,

Wow. Thanks, Highthatsize. I was on the look out for this story.
 

Greetings,
Highhatsize, you are right.
Up To the Minute on CBS just ran a story close to what you are talking about.
Mari

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...e=search_story

Relieving Pain With Abuse-Proof Drugs
Doctors Turning To New Painkillers That Don't Cause Addiction
NEW YORK, Feb. 20, 2008

Hi,
 

I still haven't heard why he was on the two pain pills. Has anyone heard on this?

Ada

Nope nothing Ada. :(

BUSHWA! (A Euphemism)
 

Dear Mari,

"Up to 25 percent of chronic pain patients abuse medication at some point."

This satement is so qualified as to be inane. On first glance, it seems to say that 25% of people using narcotic medication are abusing them. However, on closer look it says nothing substantive. I'll bet it was written by a BIG PHARMA flack.

By the way, how many millions of dollars are we spending to develop another less useful analgesic? Couldn't this money be better spent on potentiating the ones we have so that NO pain is outside the reach of analgesia?

Once this new combination is perfected, (I use the word loosely. I predict that the product will be "somewhat less effective" than the unbuffered narcotic that it replaces. However, the "authorities" will decide that a little more pain for those in chronic pain is a small price to pay in the WAR ON DRUGS.), BIG PHARMA will make a fortune. Their lobbyists will pay the legislators to make the formulation mandatory and BIG PHARMA will have two decades of patent protected profits.

It's a win-win situation. Well, except for the people in chronic pain. But some personal sacrifice in necessary if the WAR ON DRUGS is to carry on.

Cordially,

abuse proof is a goal
 

but often whatever trick is used, people find a way to bypass it.

I think the Heath Ledger tragedy is not about illegal abuse or diversion.

It is about the misconception people have that drugs given by RX by a doctor and filled by a pharmacy are SAFER than street drugs. They are only safer in that the dose is accurate, and the drug has proven therapeutic benefits.
But prescription drugs kill people every day.

Mr. Ledger mixed too many at one time and resulted in respiratory depression.

Dear mrsd,

It does seem most likely that Keith Ledger died as a result of his ignorance of the danger of combining prescription drugs, especially narcotics. I would argue that his ignorance was due to opprobrium that attends their usage EVEN when prescribed. Had he been as well informed about narcotics as he was about sexual hygiene, (a hurdle that the schools have finally made, despite a strong community aversion to talking about it), he would still be alive.

As long the authorities spend all their money on propaganda equating narcotics with the plague, moral turpitude, and criminal degeneracy instead of educating people objectively about this class of drugs, there will be thousands of more ignorant Keith Ledgers.

Cordially,
highhatsize