Yikes. I guess someone didn't like brokeback mountain.

Never saw it. I have little opinion on the man's acting abilities or the roles he played. I think I saw him in something with Gene Hackman once.

I just assume that the average house plant knows better than to mix half a dozen different powerful medications.

Don't most people here?

The only reason my father is alive and talking is because some doctor tells him the shoe-box container of heart medication he swallows everyday is safe for him to take AND doesn't interact with one another. Not so long ago, so long that it is out of mind, that was not true.

If he died of an accidental death, plus the hours he worked, let the man have his peace without ridicule. I might ridicule him if his role as the Joker isn't a success but even then that is a little to dark even for me. Any one have that quote that was at the end of A Scanner Darkly, the movie adapted from the Phillip K Dick story?

Why would the average person know that? Why would a person not knowing something that the average person knows make them stupid?

you're kidding, right?!?!

The only thing that wouldn't make this death an example of Darwin at his finest is if the police discover that one doctor prescribed all of these meds to him and told him there would be no danger. Even then, not to question the use of all these powerful drugs at once is suspect. But then again, I won't take 2 different over the counter drugs at once, but thats just me.

As it stands now, they haven't even announced if he obtained the meds legally, much less from one doctor.

I have no medical training, yet I know that swallowing a bunch of powerful medications in random combination is probably a pretty bad idea. I would assume that most people understand that.

People die stupidly every day - via the Heath Ledger method, by not wearing a seatbelt, by drinking and driving, by not wearing a life vest, by driving their snowmobile across the not-quite-frozen lake, by changing lanes without signalling, by walking along the train tracks listening to an I-Pod at full volume, and many other methods.

Their fate was in their own hands - cancer didn't take them, a bomb didn't fall on them, a gang land shootout didn't take them, they didn't get pulled into a war they never asked for. I have genuine sympathy for people who find themselves in those sorts of situations.

All the people in the first examples, including Ledger, died because they failed to follow basic common sense.

You are a better person than he was, yay!

So essentially what your saying is that because heath ledger didn't do something that you would have done, or knew stuff that you know he's stupid? I don't know. Maybe. I'm pretty sure i know some shit that you don't and vice versa- that doesn't make either one of us stupid.

Common sense? I don't think that there is any sort of universal human experience surrounding prescription drugs, why would you expect common sense to apply? I suspect that when you use the term common sense you really mean the set of all things that seem obvious to you. This raises two important questions: 1) Why would you expect the things that are obvious to you to be obvious to other people- why would you expect common sense to be common? and, 2) Why does it make sense at all to judge a person's intelligence by comparing the the set of things you think are obvious to the things the other persons thinks is obvious?

I don't really care all that much about heath ledger. I just think it's a little tasteless, shallow perhaps, to use the event of someone's death as an opportunity to tell everyone how much smarter you are than the dead guy. Yep, he's dead, and you probably wouldn't have been dead if you were him, but maybe you still would have been because you would have been him. It's even sillier when the evidence your hold up of your superior intelligence isn't really evidence of anything.

Ok.. seriously, given the cocktail of meds, I don't think this was an accident. This looks like suicide. I'm no doctor, but those are POWERFUL meds and they will literally slow your body to a halt. Being an actor, I'm sure he was well aware of what every one of those meds did for and to him. I won't even think of downing a sleeping aid when I've had alcohol (hell, I don't even think of taking any meds) why would anyone combine ALL of those meds?

He did it on purpose.

umm.. ok here's my take. The doctor who prescribed the pills should have told the man about the interactions and possible side effects etc. Most people don't really think about drug interactions.. they just know that a doctor gave them pills and they fill the script and take them. You can say it was a lack of common sense but the fact still remains that people trust doctors and what they say. So in my mind.. this falls back into the doctors or pharmacists lap who failed to inform the man.

He was a fellow human being.
His agony is our agony.
let it be.

They put me on a 1 mg ativan (which I think is one of the ones he was taking, its in the valium, xanax families) the month before my wedding because my "brain wouldnt stop" and I couldnt sleep to save my life...OTC sleeping pills wouldnt do anything for me. 1 mg of that stuff knocked my ass out....I simply cannot imagine taking it combined with anything else (even if my doctor hadnt told me not to mix it with any other "downers" including any of the "PM' pills you can take to sleep now)

I know what its like to be desperate to sleep because your brain wont shut off...but damn.....

I take ambien and pain killers together all the time.. I just don't go overboard.

I wonder if he took the ambien and was in a half-comatose state when he took more and that's what did him in? I know I've had episodes on Ambien where I am half awake half asleep and I don't really know what I'm doing. Either way.. the doctor(s) should have made it extrememly clear what to mix and what not to mix. It was also pretty dumb to have him prescribed on all of those at the same time.

Still alive, at any rate, while he's worm food.

Me am win!

A lack of sleep can do serious damage to your reasoning skills.

ugh.

Also, you all have no clue what happened. I think its more likely that he did not commit suicide. If he was only able to sleep for like 2 hours for the entire week as interviews have stated, he would be bat shit out of his mind at that point and want nothing else in the world other than to sleep. I have stayed awake for over 96 hours straight once (not out of desire to) and I can tell you that I was flipping the fuck out and it probably nearly killed me. I could totally understand someone just taking anything they can get ahold of to try and get some rest. Also, the reports that he was seriously sick at the end of his filming soon before this happened can only enhance the craziness that was going through his head at the time. And people's bodies respond to this amount of stress completely different, you can have no clue what was going through his head. So you can all sit here and pretend like you knew what was going on in his head and rationalize your hypothetical situations but until you know what it's like to be out of your mind over complete lack of sleep, illness, and whatever it was that was making him just a little off, then please quit this nonsense.

I am so with you. Thank you for taking the time to make your case so thoughtfully.

I will never understand the phenomena that keeps humans in endless, pointless competition with each other. Every misstep on the part of another is an opportunity for self-affirmation, especially when those 'others' are 'celebrities.' Yay for those of us who have managed, as of yet, not to die accidentally. :rolleyes:

Thank you, too, ring.

Ugh.

Look, you don't know any better than anyone else, so perhaps you should stop speculating as well?

While what I said was speculation, it has more reasoning in it than what you have said. There are stated reports about his inability to sleep and his severe illness and that he was pushing himself extremely hard. I see no reports backing up anything that you have said. It seems what mixedmedia said is true, that you are trying to make yourself feel superior because you have never done anything similar to what he did. Have you ever been in a situation like he was in? If not, then please quit putting down another human being who died. If so, still please quit putting down another human being who died so that you can feel better about yourself.

Because someone died taking a bad mix of prescription pills that can only mean that he was really stupid, right? He could have taken his life on purpose but the doses were low enough not to be lethal, but that's still a possibility. He could also have been in a really messed up state of mind at the time and it could have been an accident. There may also be other possibilities, but no, it had to have been just because he was stupid, right?

I agree with you and Mixed. Seem like people are engaging is a little Schadenfreude here.

On the sleep issue. An injury several years back left me with a nerve disorder in a my leg and foot. One of the medications originally prescribed left me wired, umm no make that WIRED. I had a constant feeling like I'd just drank a couple pots of coffee. Repeatedly telling my Dr. that I'd been getting 2-3 hours sleep total in a 3-4 day period was met with a shrug and "yeah, that can happen. Other than that how are you doing?" How am I doing? I'm not fucking sleeping and it's driving me bat shit crazy, that's how I'm doing!" I finally switched Dr. after a long battle with my insurance. My new Dr. immediately took me off that medication and started me on another. Within a week I was sleeping 4-5 hrs a night. Which has always been about normal for me.

On the issue of the number of different meds. I can easily see where a guy who travels the amount that Mr. Ledger did would end up seeing several different Dr's in several locations. With each Dr. spending a brief amount of time with him and prescribing something to help with pain and or sleep. I can just as easily see Mr. ledger while having difficulties in sleeping taking some meds and after not getting to sleep in a hour or two, taking another. And then another and so on and so on.

So I see no reason to jump to the conclusion that he either committed suicide or was a drug addict.

Especially since the Coroner ruled it as "accidental".

Ambien is a benzo derivative, which slows everything down, and he was on at least two opiates, which generally cause respiratory depression. I think there was an antibiotic or two in the mix, too. OTC antihistamines combined with opiates can kick up the effects, so if someone is at a high dose of opiates and takes Benadryl (etc.) it's possible to fall asleep and just stop breathing, especially if there are a bunch of other medications. There's also the possibility of Amiben-induced sleepwalking and ODing on whatever is around.

An "accident" is when an air conditioner falls out of the wall of a 30 story apartment building and lands on you, not when you take 6 different powerful pain and sleep medications at the same time and your heart stops. It's an overdose. It might not have been recreationally motivated overdose and it might not have been suicide, but the man still took a lot of drugs.

It was an "accidental overdose", which means that he didn't do it to kill himself and didn't do it to get high. He did it to relieve symptoms and miscalculated.

On a side note, maybe Westboro Babtist will go to Australia to protest the funeral and be refused entry back into the country. Hey, I can dream, can't I?

I was hoping they'd crash and join the cast of Lost. Not get hurt, but rather be surrounded by what they would automatically interpret as "the devil".

You don't understand the most basic imperative of existence? In case you missed the memo, it's to stay alive long enough to create offspring and care for them until they can care for themselves. The self affirmation is "I'm a better survivor than that person. Yay me." Yay indeed for those of us who are still here because we knew better than to overdose, accidentally or intentionally.

That is far more interesting than my idea... Maybe I should watch that show...

I don't understand why everyone thinks he's a dumbass. Ok so the man took alot of powerful meds. Most people don't even know how powerful med's are unless they are directly told. They just blindly take whatever the doc prescribes. They don't know about interactions and the possible consequences. And (even though it's been mentioned several times already) it's very, VERY, possible the man was in a sleep-walking type state of mind from the Ambien when he took the lethal combination. This is why I have my pills locked up when I'm on Ambien. I don't want to be in that state and do this exact thing. So everyone can say he's stupid, blah blah blah.. but the truth of the matter is that most people don't really know what they are taking and just how powerful what they are taking can be.. or how lethal.

[sarcastic]In case you missed all that history, the demands have changed. Nothing is simple. With that in mind, let's keep you awake for days on end with little sleep over a period no longer... than a few months. We'll observe how well you make decisions at that point.[/sarcastic]

The most basic imperative of existence is to gossip and judge others based on specious, mean-spirited opinions of the events leading up to someone's death?

Thanks for reminding me that we all, truly, deserve to die.

Judging others indeed.

I'm not saying he deserved to die or that he was a bad person. I'm saying that, for me, personal responsibility is very important and holding people accountable for their choices-good or bad-is important. It sounds like he made a lot of bad choices-overextending himself for his career, getting lots of powerful medications and using them simultaneously, being so stressed about work or life that he couldn't sleep and continuing to do things despite that. Even so, I'm not saying he deserved to die because he made those choices, just that I don't think excuses need to be made for him. I think he was a good person, and certainly a good actor, who overburdened himself and got trapped in a nosedive of high stress, unhealthy living and prescription medication. That doesn't make him a bad person but it does make him at high risk to have what did happen to him happen.

The people I feel bad for are Michelle Williams and their young child. Heath had the opportunity to make different (perhaps better) choices. He didn't. I like that he's free to make those choices. But I'm not going to say "poor him he was stressed and tired" or "blame his doctors for prescribing too much medicine" because it ended poorly. That's life.