Accidental Overdose - or Suicide?

 

There has been a lot of news recently about the significant increase lately in the number of drug overdoses resulting in fatalities. Most of these overdoses are labeled “accidental,” and surely many of them are. Of course, if drugs have been secretly laced by dealers with something dangerous like fentanyl, and the addict is unaware of that, the overdose can indeed be accidental. Although not necessarily even in that case, because news about the fact that dealers are lacing other drugs with this one has been widely reported in the press, and many addicts know other addicts.

 

I suspect that a considerable portion of these “accidental” overdoses are actually suicides, either through specific intent at that particular moment, or through strong chronic suicidal intent leading to carelessness that will certainly cause death, but at some unpredictable time.

 

There is no way to know for certain, obviously, but I would like to discuss the deaths of two celebrities to illustrate my thesis here: actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Americana singer-songwriter Townes van Zant.

 

Van Zandt wrote numerous songs, such as "Pancho and Lefty", "For the Sake of the Song", "Tecumseh Valley", "Rex's Blues", and "To Live Is to Fly", that are widely considered masterpieces of American songwriting.  

 

Van Zandt died on New Year's Day 1997 from cardiac arrythmia caused by health problems stemming from years of substance abuse.  In 1994, he was admitted to the hospital to detox, when a doctor told Jeanene Van Zandt that trying to detox Townes again could potentially kill him. He grew increasingly frail during the mid-1990s, with friends noting that he seemed to have "withered.”

 

The evidence for my viewpoint comes in the shape of the lyrics of a song he wrote called “Waiting Around to Die.” I suspect that this is exactly what he was doing.

 

The lyrics:

Now I'm out of prison
I got me a friend at last
He don't drink or steal or cheat or lie
His name's Codine
He's the nicest thing I've seen
Together we're gonna wait around and die
Together we're gonna wait around and die

 

 Hoffman told friends he feared he would die of a heroin overdose weeks before his body was found on the floor of his Manhattan bathroom with a needle sticking out of his left arm. The star, who was found with 70 bags of heroin and 20 used needles in his home, returned to AA in December after relapsing into three-day binges. When asked how serious his addiction was, he replied: “If I don't stop now, I know I'm going to die.” And die he did. On 2/2/14, he was found dead in his New York apartment with a needle in his arm. The New York City Chief Medical Examiner said that he died of an accidental overdose of drugs, but one has to wonder how an “accident” can be predicted with such precision.