Carrie Fisher suffers heart attack on plane, dies at age 60*

Yeah, that sounds like a wonderful life I've been missing out on...

 

I hope you hit bottom. I hope you get so down and out that you want to quit it all. Crystal meth will change you into another person, a monster. My nephew was on the stuff for years. It came to the point where he almost executed his own mother with a pistol to her head. He consistently stole, burglarized. Went to prison. My great nephew was caught selling it. I have two other nephews who can't seem to kick heroin. Ruined their lives and they have kids. One of the mothers is also an addict. My brother went to prison for selling to an undercover. Last time we heard about him, he was on crack, gangs after him, lost his job, and was living on the street selling newspapers on the corner.

Dude, that is your future.

Only you know why you decided you needed to try it.

There have been a lot of studies that show people self-medicate. They may be lacking a certain brain chemical that the drugs compensate for. The problem is, other studies have shown that drugs change your brain in fundamental ways. They change the chemical balances and even the brain structure so the brain craves the stuff. Your thinking changes. If they do quit the drugs, they literally become numb emotionally and can't enjoy pleasure, so they start up again. You cannot enjoy life sober. All you've told me is consistent with the studies.

Good luck to you.

 

$100 per autograph and $100 photo. Last time in Vancouver at a fan expo held at the convention center with 10,000 or 15,000 people attending. She was there 2-3 full days and still had people who were still willing to pay up.

Mark Hamill at one recent expo was $200 auto and $200 photo. I think that's excessive, but you should see what the main guy from the recent Doctor Who was getting.

 

Wow, that sounds so very sad. It was hard to read as was "}{eywood"'s commentary, which felt so self destructive.

 

My sentiments exactly. Not to say she actively sought a way to die, but putting caution to the wind to enjoy herself in the moment while deep down knowing that she's expediting the inevitable? Maybe. I suspect she wasn't as exuberant about it as you, though.

And..... don't do crystal meth. It's a plague on mankind.

 

I've gone through the pain of seeing students going down that path and losing them (I'm a teacher). It's sad to hear when someone wants to do it and results of it.

 

A brave post. I seriously recommend you do not try meth...unless you are a fan of bleeding gums, diminished ability to reason and permanent health issues. You mention that cocaine almost got the best of you before -be careful that your once a month habit doesn't get out of control. I do think that some people can manage relatively safe recreational use of drugs (I know a few), but others will find that drugs lead to a very dark place. Grant's post concerning his nephews is no fairy tale. Good luck to you.

 

Thanks for this, Grant. My mother pretty much destroyed her life searching for the next high. Her addictions contributed to my dad's decision to take his own life when I was 3. My grandparents never fully recovered from that. Because of ongoing abuse and neglect, I was removed from her custody and placed with my dad's parents when I was 4. Later, she turned over my newborn half-sister to her parents after threatening to kill her by throwing her in the river. Now in her mid-60's, she's been removed from that environment and is now an invalid in a nursing home in Kentucky. But most of her family will have nothing to do with her. Her brother is the only one who looks in on her periodically. I have reconnected with her remotely for the first time in about 25 years but even now I won't talk to my kids about her. As far as they know, she's dead.

I guess the only positive that ever came out of this is my total aversion to illicit recreational drugs (although I do enjoy a cold beer or two). While my sister utterly despises her, I simply feel sorry for her. She's likely approaching the end of her life and has absolutely nothing to show for it. It boggles my mind that anyone would ever make a conscious decision to take this path. What's also lost in a lot of this is the horrible effect that addiction has on one's loved ones.

 

Haha, sorry! I misunderstood what you were referring to. I thought you were saying she could do $100,000 worth of drugs in a weekend, which of course is ridiculous.

 

It's the drugs talking. There's this heroin/opioid epidemic now. It's always been there, but it's getting more exposure. These famous people like Prince and Carrie Fisher should be enough warning, but it's happening to ordinary people every day. Even if you stop doing the drugs, the damage they do to your heart, kidneys, and liver may do you in at a young age.

 

What a stupid, naive thing to say. The only people that are bored by sobriety are boring people. Trust me I know.

 

Was she ever seen partying in public or was this something a bit more solo she'd do in her hotel room with her dog Gary and maybe 1-2 others around?

 

The heroin/opioid epidemic is rampant in my town. I live in the same town that I teach and it's heartbreaking to see my students/their family members going through it. It's a helpless feeling knowing you can only do so much and seeing the toll it's taking.

 

But at least they're not boring

 

I think if you have underlying psychological issues recreational drug use rapidly turns into addiction. And of course some people who aren't already a bit unstable are wired to become addicted easily. But I do know people who do drugs from time to time and have for many years, and they've never gotten addicted. Of course, that's all prescription stuff and coke. I think heroin is a lot more dangers, and meth is death.

My family was a bit unconventional and broken, but nowhere near as bad as what some people had to cope with. I had a stable home from 5 - 18 with my grandmother and great aunt and very little drama. The two old ladies drove me nuts as a kid, but now looking back I was so lucky. Unfortunately, neither of them lived long enough for me to tell them that! But I'm pretty sure they knew I'd figure it out eventually...

 

A few of the more cynical comments I've read about the tragic death of Carrie.... (Or even sarcastic...)

 

Well I'm not wrong. This was supposed to be her grand comeback moment and it would have lasted for years.

 

Ain't it fun when you're always on the run
Ain't it fun when your friends despise what you've become
Ain't it fun when you get so high that you, well you just can't come
Ain't it fun when you know that you're gonna die young

It's such fun... such fun

 

Lifetime untreated apnea alone can cause cardiomegaly and heart failuer. Combine that with the cocaine thing? Yeah her heart finally gave out.

Ironically the cash cow of being back in SWs probably gave her the means to get back into the lifestyle. And as an addict you dont just start back at square one with a little toot. You start right where you left off.

Only this time her heart was most likely in bad shape and was like a ticking bomb in which that next binge finally pushed her heart into cardiac arrest.

 

Yeah, plus you have to factor her age into things. She was 60 and a very hard 60 at that.

She had spent decades doing serious and repeated damage to her body. She was 60 with the weakened heart of someone much older.

She wanted to have her fun, and she paid the price for it- it just took awhile for it all to catch up with her. I hope the rich Hollywood kids in their 20's learn something from this but I doubt many of them will.

What makes this really tragic is that it happened just as her career was in a really great place and would have stayed there for the next 4 or 5 years with the Star Wars sequels and who knows what other opportunities could have come after? It could have been one of the greatest comeback stories in the history of entertainment.

 

Laughner knew.

 

Man it seems everyone is on pills. Killed both my sisters and I haven't seen my mom since I was 12 (I'm 48) because of drugs. Epidemic

 

A lot of this epidemic is manufactured by the government/pharmaceutical alliance. They've taken away the general practitioners' ability to give out prescriptions for pain drugs, making everyone go to pain management. But because of archaic drug laws people who need pain medication can't get it if they also use marijuana for their pain (or for whatever other medical benefit they get from it i.e. cancer prevention). This drives people who otherwise never would have any use for the seedy underworld of drug dealings out on the streets to buy medication from others who have managed to get their 'scripts, and, if that can't be achieved, to start using heroin. In my town someone drove a van into an apothecary and took only opiates. Another robbed the emergency room at gunpoint. Neither did it to sell the drugs, but because they were cut off their prescriptions and couldn't stand the pain anymore.

Back to Carrie Fisher. Does anyone have a theory of why she got all mush-mouthed all of a sudden? She didn't sound like that on Family Guy a few years ago

 

She could have had some kind of small stroke and not even known it (it happens, believe it or not).

 

Lithium can cause issues with speech too, can't it?