After a long autopsy, medical examiners have finally declared that Heath Ledger died from an accidental overdose of prescription medications including painkillers, anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills, the New York City medical examiner’s office said Tuesday.
This news comes after many speculated he was using illegal drugs and even late night gossip magaziness tried to make people believe they had a video tape of Ledger using drugs, when in fact the video didn’t show Ledger using drugs at all, only drinking a beer.
“Mr. Heath Ledger died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine,” the office said in a short statement.
“We have concluded that the manner of death is accident, resulting from the abuse of prescription medications.”
There was obviously something wrong in Ledger’s life if he felt he needed to resort to so much medication, I mean, here is the description of what was found:
Hydrocodone and oxycodone are painkillers. Diazepam is an anti-anxiety drug commonly sold under the brand name Valium; alprazolam is also an anti-anxiety drug, sold under such names as Xanax. Temazepam, sold under such names as Restoril and Euhypnos, is a sleeping agent, as is doxylamine.
There is no telling what caused Ledger to resort to such prescription drug use, but fingers have been pointed at his divorce from ex-wife Michelle Williams to his portrayal of the Joker in the upcoming The Dark Knight. Many people point to the interview he did with the New York Times regarding The Dark Knight in which he said, “Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night. I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.”
Ledger was currently in the process of filming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus for director Terry Gilliam, and folks on that set, in which Ledger had been shooting in England, said the actor apparently had been suffering from a respiratory ailment in the days before he died.
Co-star Christopher Plummer told Entertainment Weekly that Ledger had a “terrible, lingering bug in London, and he couldn’t sleep at all. We all — I thought he’d probably got walking pneumonia.”
The fate of that film is still up in the air with discussions of a CGI Ledger and even Johnny Depp stepping in for the deceased actor have been mentioned.
I am not sure how this news makes me feel. For some reason I guess there is a minuscule amount of relief since it wasn’t suicide and it wasn’t illegal drug use, but it isn’t as if it makes the situation any better.
