Sleep Junkie

Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Anna Nicole Smith and Elvis are all dead because they abused prescription drugs and frequently used them for no therapeutic use. There is often a notice in the paper about their death that there were no illegal drugs found in their system. Well if you were shooting heroin, popping prescription pills or had a piano fall on your head, you’re still dead. At least the heroin junkie is found dead of a heroin overdose and the piano was an unfortunate accident, unless it was preceded with “Hey, Bubba, watch this.”  But the dead celebrity if often found with a cocktail of half a dozen or more “legal” drugs in their system.

Some drugs taken together can have a toxic effect, sometimes they interact by reducing the effectiveness of each other so neither one is working very well. What can happen with taking multiple prescription drugs is that there can be an additive effect when they’re taken together where their combined strength is multiplied, like where two plus two equals nine.

These celebrities suffered from insomnia and some were taking sleeping pills. But instead of naturally treating their problem they often made it worse by self-medicating themselves and unfortunately died from combined drug intoxication.

More people are dying from overdoses caused by the abuse of prescription medicine than from traditional street drugs and there is no shortage of doctors to be the new drug pushers. Some celebrities are surrounded by an inner circle of hanger-on parasites and some doctors get a thrill being part of the group. They want to impress their friends by claiming to be some celebrity’s doctor, but they’re just on-call with their prescription pads.

Did Anne Nicole Smith need thousands of pills? Did Heath and Elvis need several painkillers and sleep aids? Why did Michael Jackson feel that the only way he could get to sleep was to use the surgical anaesthetic propofol?

People look up to celebrities and sometimes follow their lead. It’s too bad that you only hear about their screw ups. Maybe we need a tabloid headline that reads, “Celebrity Slept for 8 Hours and Woke up Refreshed.” Then again, maybe most celebrity reporters and paparazzi should be thrown in jail for stalking.

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