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Blog post by Patty Huntington
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The devil wears Pharma? Ledger felled amidst a deadly fashion for drugs
Fully Chic Blog
Patty Huntington
Friday, January 25, 2008 at 12:48pm
In the absence of any evidence to date that Jack Nicholson had even met Heath Ledger in life, Nicholson’s comment “I warned him” - made upon hearing the news of Ledger’s death, as can be heard in this video - is all the more cryptic.
Warned Ledger about the pitfalls of celebrity? Or warned him about the risks involved in the invocation of a character as demonic as The Joker, which Nicholson played in the original 1989 version of the Batman film franchise, and whose signature line was: “Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?”
With Nicholson’s separate revelation that he almost died after taking the highly popular prescription sleep aid Ambien, which Ledger recently admitted to have used, several news outlets all-too-enthusiastically jumped to the conclusion that Ambien was what Nicholson was warning about.
Until definitive toxicology results come in the world can but continue to merely speculate over the real cause of Ledger’s tragic, and lonely, death. What we do know is that the police seemed swift to rule out suicide. That he may have been suffering from either the flu or pneumonia. That six prescription drugs were found in Ledger’s apartment – although not necessarily in his bloodstream – most of them reportedly for anxiety and sleep problems. And that, in spite of Wednesday’s claims out of London that Ledger had battled heroin addiction late last year, there were rumours of alleged illicit drug use/abuse circulating around the actor as far back as September 2006 .
We also know of course that if drugs killed Heath Ledger, he would be by no means the first to succumb to an accidental overdose of either one single substance - or else a lethal chemical cocktail.
Fashionably numb
Why is a fashion writer weighing in on drugs? Not just because, at the time of his death, Ledger’s connections to the fashion industry appeared to be growing. Romantically linked with models Helena Christensen and Gemma Ward, Ledger was at the time of his death in the middle of shooting a film alongside yet another model, Lily Cole. WWD recalled on Wednesday that Ledger was one of the biggest stars at New York Fashion Week in September, front row at Marc Jacobs and present at several of the week’s most high profile fashion parties.
In spite of anecdotal evidence of nicotine, Vicodin and Clenbuterol use being rife amongst models, and a score of fashion figures from Marc Jacobs to Calvin Klein, Donatella Versace, Kate Moss etc, who have battled substance abuse, are there in fact more drugs in fashion than any other single professional arena, from music to film, television, sport, high finance etc? I have yet to be convinced that that is the case.
I would however have no hesitation in saying that drugs are most definitely ultra fashionable. No, I’m not talking about “seedy” shooting galleries, and “desperate” heroin addicts - but recreational drug use which is endemic throughout the party scene. From big public dance parties/raves and nightclubs to seemingly every private event, including business functions. Drugs are perceived as fashionable, “cool” and as innocuous a component of the party scene as champagne. Some feel the situation might be getting a little too laissez-faire.
“You’ve got women doing coke at functions at midday - then they’re driving to pick their kids up from daycare” one alarmed Australian fashion publicist told me yesterday.
Rehab chic
No drugs are not news, most especially in high-flying circles dripping in glamour, celebrity - and disposable cash. But society does appear to have become inured to recreational drug use and notably the term “rehab” of late. Once associated with social outcasts – and the occasional downwardly-mobile celebrity – the word rehab today is dropped casually across tabloid magazine covers as a showbiz buzzword. And perhaps this is merely a reflection of the fact that such a plethora of popular contemporary celebrities, from Lindsay Lohan to Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, Kate Moss and Robbie Williams, have checked themselves into rehab.
It’s not just the tabloid press which seems to think that rehab is the new black. In July last year, as covered by this blog in August, one of the world’s most high profile ‘high’ fashion publications, Vogue Italia, published a 50-page editorial spread called Super Mods in Rehab, shot by Steven Meisel in a US rehab centre.
But while it’s often difficult to navigate one’s way through to the bathrooms of many venues these days for the not-terribly-discreet queues of coke snorters and e-poppers – and this includes the august Art Gallery of NSW at a function before Christmas - a very real crisis appears to unravelling in the perfectly legit arena of prescription drugs.
The irony of the coincidence that Ledger died on the eve of the US Federal Government’s announcement of a new prescription drug abuse program would not have been lost on those closely following the issue.
Prescription for disaster
In July a representative of both the Australian National Council on Drugs and the World Health Organization, Queensland University Professor John Saunders, warned that this country is in the grip of a legal drug abuse crisis , with one of the world’s highest incidences of prescription drug abuse.
Saunders’ claims followed a February 2007 warning from the Drug Control Board of the United Nations, that the abuse and trafficking of prescription drugs is set to outstrip abuse of illicit drugs such as cocaine, MDMA and methamphetamine – with abuse of the latter decreasing over four consecutive years in the US, due to a growing perception amongst secondary students that these illicit drugs are “high risk”. According to the UN report:
“However the high and increasing level of abuse of prescription drugs by both adolescents and adults is a serious cause of concern. The gradual increase in the abuse of sedatives (including barbiturates), tranquilizers and narcotic drugs other than heroin by the general population has resulted in prescription drugs becoming the second most abused class of drugs after cannabis”.
In July 2005, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University reported that the number of Americans who abuse controlled prescription drugs had nearly doubled from 7.8 million to 15.1 million from 1992 to 2003, with abuse amongst teens more than tripling over the same period.
Killing pain
In August 2007, using Drug Enforcement Administration figures, AP reported that the volume of five major painkillers rose 90 per cent between 1997 and 2005, with Oxycodone , the chemical used in OxyContin, responsible for the most of the increase by jumping nearly six-fold in the same period.
A synthetic opioid which provides a sustained, morphine-like high, OxyContin was designed for use by terminal cancer patients and chronic pain sufferers. Nicknamed “hillbilly heroin”, the drug has been linked to hundreds of deaths, with the US Drug Enforcement Administration reporting a 400 per cent increase in OxyContin-related deaths from 1996-2001.
Alongside Vicodin and others, OxyContin is a popular party drug and its alleged raft of celebrity fans includes, at least according to US police, Courtney Love , and, according to her estranged father, Ledger mate Lindsay Lohan .
A fortnight ago Gold Coast Drug Council president Sean Cousins warned that OxyContin was becoming a growing problem in his jurisdiction.
The rise in prescription drug abuse follows not only an explosion in e-retailing by both legitimate, and unauthorised vendors, but also a reported explosion in marketing expenditure by pharmaceutical companies. In May last year OxyContin’s US parent Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to criminal charges that the company misled regulators, doctors and the public about the drug’s risks – agreeing to pay US$600 million in fines. Three company executives also pleaded guilty to “misbranding” and agreed to a further US$34.5 million fines. The New York Times reported that Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin campaign was the most aggressive marketing campaign ever undertaken by a pharmaceutical company for a narcotic painkiller.
Whatever killed Heath Ledger, he was clearly no stranger to prescription meds. Nor indeed are many normal consumers. In November Ledger revealed that had taken Ambien, aka Stilnox, as a sleep aid and indeed I can report first-hand that Americans in fashion/celebrity circles seem to be particularly fond of Ambien. In spite of a litany of evidence of bizarre potential side effects – to which some Americans appear oblivious - the drug’s name is casually dropped in conversation as if it’s some kind of magic, and perfectly benign sleep candy for the jetset, with “I just popped an Ambien” becoming a fashionable late night or mid-flight signoff.
The anti “Big Pharma” lobby in the US is having a field day with Ledger’s death. In the absence of any conclusive autopsy results, its exponents have speculated that Ledger is the latest innocent victim of a bigger conspiracy.
The lobby is pushing for greater accountability in the pharmaceutical arena over what it claims is a “mass drugging of America led by the FDA and Big Pharma”. Everyone, it claims, is dancing with the devil via the use of government-approved prescription drugs.
Sadly, whichever way it swings, under that full moon on Tuesday in Gotham city, Heath Ledger appears to have had one too many appointments on his dance card.
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