Heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, anti anxiety pills…. Poor PSH
— Cait Dies at the End (@C8_isGr8) March 3, 2014
Keith Humphreys isn’t surprised by the results of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s autopsy released on Friday:
Hoffman’s tragic overdose was absolutely the norm: He died from a combination of drugs, not from impure or unusually strong heroin. The benzodiazepines may have been particularly lethal in that they, like alcohol, seem able to lower acute tolerance for opioids, thereby turning a user’s standard dose into an “overdose”.
Sullum has more on mixed-drug overdoses:
Drug combinations like this are typical of deaths attributed to heroin or other narcotics. Data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) indicate that “multi-drug deaths” accounted for most fatalities involving opiates or opioids in 2010: 72 percent in surburban New York, 83 percent in Los Angeles, and 56 percent in Chicago, for example. Back in the early 1990s, the share of heroin-related deaths reported by DAWN that involved other drugs was even higher, 90 percent or more. (Note that the numbers in the table are misaligned and need to be shifted downward.)
In short, when someone dies from what is described as a heroin overdose, the actual cause is usually a fatal mixture of two or more substances, frequently including depressants such as alcohol or prescription tranquilizers.
The Dish 