Letters to the Editor
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When did Heath become she?
Dr. Zaroff's piece was interesting -- and timely -- but why did he begin writing about Heath Ledger and then suddenly switch to calling the drug user in question "she"?
Is the doctor trying to tell us that young women are more likely to have this kind of drug problem than men? Or does he know something about Heath that the tabloid press hasn't uncovered yet?
Inquiring minds want to know.
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We can all read
When you go to the pharmacy and get a prescription you get a print out of information that explains, among other things, that you should not combine different kinds of medication, and that you should tell your doctor whether you are taking other kinds of medication. I am not discounting the pernicious effect of pharmaceutical company advertising, but it's hard for me to believe that the prescription drugs Ledger was taking did not include ample warnings about the risks of combining multiple sleep medications. And that doesn't even get to whether he could have googled the matter on Web-MD or half a dozen other websites that provide free information about the risks and uses of drugs. Ultimately, it's our own safety, our own health that is at stake, and we owe it to ourselves not to rely on third parties that have a heavy dose of conflict of interest.
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Reasonable Point of View
As much as I don't want to believe it, I think Heath Ledger
had a drug problem. Was he a skid row junkie or dancing on
the table tops, no but I think he was drug dependent. I think he was trying to clean up his act by trying to use prescription
drugs to ease his dependence on illegal drugs. When we know
where the oxycontin and hydrocodone came from, then there will
be a better picture of what happened. What healthy 28 year old
has two strong painkillers in their system like these, for
what reason? I think his family skirted the issue of his drug
use in order to protect him but my guess is, they knew he was
struggling. By all accounts, Heath was a nice "bloke" and that
probably contributed to his early death. Who wants to confront
someone they want to keep as a friend. I think people covered
for Heath to his own detriment. There is no question that we
need to track prescription drugs more closely but that alone
won't solve the problem.
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[Red star goes here] Shemale?
When did Heath become she?
Dr. Zaroff's piece was interesting -- and timely -- but why did he begin writing about Heath Ledger and then suddenly switch to calling the drug user in question "she"?
I think I can tell you the answer.
The article was originally a fairly straightforward exposition of the data in the Centers for Disease Control 2007 annual report on self poisoning deaths in the US.
At some point someone, either the author or an editor, decided to put a couple of paragraphs about Heath Ledger at the top to sex up the article and make it more topical and controversial. This is part of the reason why it does not provide a very good explanation of why Ledger died. That was never the original intention of the piece.
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it's not just doctors
Jeez, anyone who's taking that many prescription drugs, even one at a time, also thinks popping a pill is the answer to all their problems. I had vicious insomnia for over 10 years - the kind that makes you laugh out loud at those stupid magazine articles that tell you you just need to cut out caffeine, not read in bed, etc., as if serious insomniacs hadn't tried all that years earlier. My doctor refused to give me any kind of prescription sleeping pills - he doesn't like any of them. I still don't sleep all that well, but at least I know when I do go to sleep, I'll wake up.
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Diagnosis: Anxiety Disorder
When I heard about Heath Ledger's death I was shocked but when I heard about his problems with insomnia, I wasn't completely surprised at the prescriptions he was taking. Being a therapist who works with anxiety disorders, there is something I noticed about Heath years ago that I see in my therapy clients with anxiety disorders.
About the third of the clients I work with have what I describe as a certain extreme tension in their hands. They clench them or flick or hold tightly the thumb to index finger. Bar none, every person I have so far met so far with that particular tension has an anxiety disorder that includes severe bouts of insomnia. Watching Heath's work, I saw that same hand tension. I know, it sounds absurd and I might be very wrong. But after I started looking for it in people, I was amazed at how accurate it was as tell-tale sign of severe anxiety.
As far as the prescriptions go, people who don't have extreme anxiety don't even begin to comprehend how debilitating it is, especially where sleep is concerned (sorry, Amerigo, but you are WRONG on this one). Most people with severe anxiety disorder who have insomnia only sleep maybe 4 hours a night and they can suffer with it for years and years, night after night. It can drive the person crazy because of it and also drive them into deep depression.
I have had clients who will take any drug in the book and in any combination (pain pills, sleeping pills, anti-anxiety pills, whatever) just to relax enough to sleep or to stay asleep. I suspect Heath had been doing some various drug combination for years (as many of people who suffer from it, do!) just to sleep. People don't realize how desperate someone gets not being able to sleep. I also suspect that because of his recent stress in filming and his relationship breakup that his insomnia was exacerbated and so, having had no problem before with the combination of drugs, he added one or two more, never realizing the dire consequences.
What is sad here is that his doctors didn't diagnose him properly and, therefore, did not give him proper treatment. But I have found that people who suffer from severe anxiety and insomnia often have their anxiety, including the insomnia, dismissed out of hand from doctors because of a real lack of empathy this horrible problem. They're basically told to suck it up and that a lack of sleep won't hurt them. The trouble is, lack of sleep does hurt them. Especially, if it goes on day after day, week after week and year after year. But because it is so dismissed, people often give up or shy away from revealing the full extent of the problem to the doctor. But it still hurts. Often, as in this case, badly.
I have had clients coming close to the same end as Heath trying to relax and sleep or calm down. Or they self-medicate with heavy use of drugs and alcohol. Severe anxiety and it's resultant insomnia really is something that needs to recognized and addressed with more open understanding and empathy by other people who do not suffer from it and, more especially, by the medical profession.