Today's Evil Beet Gossip

Today in Believe It or Not: Daniel Smith’s Death Drug-Related

Cyril Wecht — the man who single-handedly taught a nation what “pathologist” means — announced Wednesday that Anna Nicole Smith’s son Daniel died from a combination of methadone, Zoloft and Lexapro.

The Zoloft and Lexapro are commonly prescribed for depression — a disease from which Daniel reportedly suffered — but they’re from the same class of drugs, and it would be unusual for them to be prescribed for concurrent use. Methadone is an opiate sometimes used to treat chronic pain in cancer patients and the like, but it is more often used by recovering heroin addicts. Or 20-year-old kids who figure that, if they mix it with a bunch of depression meds, they’ll catch a killer buzz, or at least be able to dull whatever pain comes along with a Daniel Smith childhood and genetic framework.

So that’s the shocking conclusion: drug overdose, probably accidental. It’s in all respects a tragedy, but I hope that, with the level of publicity this story’s received, someone somewhere will think twice before they try the same thing, and some good can come of all this.

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