Alcohol & Drug Addiction Treatment

Official statements released after Heath Ledger’s death gave unequivocal confirmation that he died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine. In layman’s terms, Heath was on too many prescription drugs all at once. Further reports indicated that medical professionals and pharmaceutical companies denounced any responsibility for Heath’s tragic and untimely death, as the combination of medications Heath was on was one that “no doctor would ever prescribe.” So let us assume then that these medications were obtained illegally and they were not prescribed. Some unscrupulous doctor sold the drugs somewhere and they ended up on the streets. The drugs were abused and resulted in the death of a loving father.

This is a nation wide problem, especially for residential drug rehabs. This does not only happen in Hollywood. This happens every day in regular American lives. In King County, Washington (Seattle), prescription opiates killed 148 people in 2006, a 572 percent increase since 1997. In Virginia, prescription narcotics took 399 lives in 2006, compared with 146 deaths from cocaine and amphetamines. In Oklahoma, of 603 drug-related deaths in 2006, more than half, 327, were attributed to hydrocodone, methadone or oxycodone. In Florida, people who died of drug overdoses in 2007 had prescription drugs in their systems more often than illicit drugs.

How many more celebrities must have their tragic story plastered across tabloid magazines? How many more parents must lose their children, and how many more children must lose their parents? Prescription drugs are highly addictive and can be deadly. Yet they are prescribed to the masses to cover up symptoms which are a direct result of nutritional deficiencies or sleep deprivation.

If pharmaceutical companies won’t take responsibility and neither will doctors, who will?

Tags: celebrities, celebrity death, doctors, drug rehab, heath ledger, pharmaceutical companies, prescription drugs, residential drug rehabs

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 5:41 pm and is filed under heath ledger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.