Oscar winning actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in his New York City apartment this past Sunday morning, apparently of a drug overdose. Various media outlets are reporting that Hoffman had fifty bags of heroin in his possession when he died. That’s a lot of heroin for a drug user, and if the reports are true, it’s no wonder the drug killed him. Heroin is an extremely dangerous drug and it only takes one hit for some people to die from it. Shooting heroin is as close to playing Russian-Roulette as a person can come without having a gun or a bullet.
One thing that bothers me when a famous celebrity dies of a drug overdose is the amount of news coverage the tragic event seems to garner. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the public mourning the loss of a gifted individual, but I worry that people (especially the younger crowd) will fall victim to the belief that only famous celebrities and really rich people die of drug overdoses. In fact, just the opposite is true. Most drug overdose victims are people with outwardly normal lives who get caught up in the tentacles of drug use and can’t find a way to extricate themselves from its clutches. We don’t usually see the details of their drug use in the papers. We just see their obituaries and the names of the mourning family members they leave in their wake.
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