Letters to the Editor
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Yeah, right.
HEATH LEDGER enjoyed indulging in cocaine and ecstasy binges with NAOMI CAMPBELL in his early days as a Hollywood star, according to the supermodel's former assistant. Rebecca White worked for the British catwalk star for three years from 2001, and claims she witnessed the extent of the tragic actor's drug addiction several times during her employment. She tells British newspaper The Sun, "When I was working for Naomi I saw Heath do drugs a few times. He was new on the scene but everybody was hailing him as the new It Boy actor. "We had been hanging in Naomi's bungalow at the Bel Air Hotel. Heath asked Naomi if she had any cocaine - I use to carry it around for her - and I remember giving him the packet and he went off, back and forth throughout the night." At another celebrity event, White claims to have seen Ledger take ecstasy with reformed addict Campbell: "We went to... (a) party at this club. There was coke and a big bag of ecstasy pills. Naomi gave Heath a handful of these little blue pills and I remember him putting them all in his mouth at once and swigging a bottle of Cristal champagne." And White also alleges to have bought cocaine on behalf of the Brokeback Mountain star on more than one occasion: "Each time I got an eight ball, which is four-and-a-half grams. The second time he came up all three of us spent a night doing coke in her (Campbell's) bungalow. It was quite decadent. We were there for five or six hours doing lines." But White, who went on to work as a personal assistant for actress Claire Danes - a close pal of Ledger's ex-fiancee Michelle Williams - admits the actor was desperate to change his lifestyle following the birth of his and Williams' daughter, Matilda, in 2005. She adds, "Heath felt that he really wanted to be a family man. He adored his daughter." Ledger was found dead in his New York apartment on Tuesday (22Jan08). An autopsy carried out on Wednesday (23Jan08) failed to reveal how the actor died, although police believe his death is drug-related as sleeping pills were found by his bed.
http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/ledgers%20drug%20binges%20with%20campbell_1057302
Sources told Mail Online that Ledger had been battling substance abuse problems - including an addiction to heroin - for some time.
"He had a stint in rehab last year when he was treated for heroin," a source told The Daily Mail, adding that Ledger was increasingly introverted at the time of his death.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=509837&in_page_id=1773&ct=5
Well, you can believe what you want and possibly these stories are made up. The Daily Mail article contains a great deal of detail--only a tiny bit is quoted here--and makes a convincing case that Ledger was a long term drug addict.
Only today the BBC reports that the United Nations drug watchdog says that Britain and other countries are way too tolerant towards the drug addiction habits of celebrities, who in turn influence the behavior of young people.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7278943.stm
No doubt we will soon be reading about how Amy Winehouse died from a prescription drugs overdose, and Britney Spears, probably too.
Yes, starstruck doctors also play their part. All of the several drugs listed as having killed Heath Ledger Restoril and Unisom), two potent narcotics (oxycodone and hydrocodone) and two tranquilizers (Valium and Xanax) are drugs that should almost never be prescribed to anybody except in very limited quantities for a very specific condition and should never be prescribed in combination.
I am quite sure that Ledger knew perfectly well that he was not taking the drugs as directed by a physician and had no intention of doing so.
Anyhow, with all the attention paid to the death of Anna Nicole Smith and Heath Ledger, it is hardly possible that in the future celebrities will be able to claim that they did not realise how dangerous these drugs are, especially when combined.
The big problem though is that addicts lie like crazy to get drugs and starstruck doctors must find it really hard to turn away famous patients who are complaining of insomnia or imaginary pains, or to tell them to get some over-the-counter Benadryl for sleep and Motrin for pain.
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But how much can you really take
This article highlights a major problem with both prescription and over the counter drugs: Most people have no idea how drugs affect their body, so whenever we stray from the doctor's advice we are just guessing what is safe.
Of course the safest thing is to take drugs only as directed. But you often get the sense that you could take more of something without a problem. When I have a cold, I take pseudoephedrine every 8 hours instead of every 12 -- it helps, and I haven't suffered any negative effects (that I know of). So I assume that the official dose is low because it's over the counter, or because they are playing it safe to minimize risk. But I can't ask my doctor "How much DayQuil can I really take?" He will just say, use only as directed. But I'm terribly sick, so I decide to take more, and the results seem to confirm that taking the next dose early is perfectly safe and more effective.
This is a pretty typical American experience with drugs. It's easy to imagine that after years of taking "too much" over the counter drugs without an apparent problem, people would apply the same logic to prescription drugs where the effects are more dangerous.
Some people are going to figure out that combining prescription drugs, or taking an extra pill, is okay -- or at least, it seems okay, though there might be bad effects that we can't see. Doctors seem to lose credibility when we feel like we can take more than they prescribe. And even though we have no idea what we are really doing to our bodies, we decide to risk it because we feel so sick / sleepless / whatever.
I'm not sure what the solution is -- If someone would tell me exactly how much cold medicine I can really take safely, and what I'm risking when I take three pills instead of two, I would listen with great interest. But no doctor is ever going to tell me that, so I'll just keep on guessing. Or, maybe the maximum dose really is the maximum safe dose and while I feel fine, I've been hurting my body in some imperceptible way. I really don't have a clue.