Hollywood's Interventionist On Heath Ledger's Death

I don’t think Heath Ledger woke up in the morning thinking, “I’m going to kill myself today.”

Heath had stated before that he took an Ambien during the shooting of Batman: The Dark Knight, and that wasn’t enough, so he had to take more.

It’s kind of like what happened with Anna Nicole Smith; when you have an addictive personality, if you’ve been taking Valium, Ambien, Xanax and all these types of drugs, you build up a tolerance. You wake up and think you need to take another pill to go back to sleep, when really you’re still operating in a level of sleep walk. You take that other pill and shut down your body.

If reports are true that Heath was also suffering from pneumonia at that time, then that just added to the danger. This poor young man was exhausted; he’d been traveling all over the world, shooting and promoting movies, and he was physically drained.

Our bodies can only take so much; it needs to rest and heal. If Heath had pneumonia, then his body was just over-exhausted. In that state of sleepwalking he ended up, unfortunately, taking that last pill that just shut his body down.

Early reports of his death painted a picture of there being pills strewn all about. I think we’re quick to paint that picture because there had been reports that Heath was having challenges with his own personal recovery process. There were some reports that he’d gone through some 12-step treatments and was trying to stay sober.

In my opinion, a drug overdose is the only thing that could take the life of such a healthy young man.