Carrie Fisher, best known as Star Wars icon Princess Leia, was a bona fide bipolar addict. Her autopsy report came out yesterday, and cocaine, heroin, opiates, methadone, ecstasy, and alcohol were found in her body.
Like many of us who are bipolar addicts, Fisher hid her addictions. Her cause of death was officially confirmed as sleep apnea, with other factors, including heart disease and drug abuse. Drug abuse can intensify symptoms of sleep apnea and even prove to be fatal when the two are combined.
The Los Angeles Coroner’s toxicology report shed light on Fisher’s addictions. The actress, who went into cardiac arrest on an airplane and was rushed to Ronald Reagan UCLA Hospital on Dec. 23, 2016, had snorted cocaine as recently as 72 hours before the trip and had used heroin, although the time, dose, and method of administration of the latter drug could not be confirmed.
The family did not wish for Fisher’s body to be dissected for a typical autopsy, so the coroner’s office relied on CT scans of the body.
Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd, said in an interview with People last Friday that drug use was indeed a problem for her mother. “My mom battled drug addiction and mental illness her entire life. She ultimately died of it,” Lourd told the magazine. “She was purposefully open in all of her work about the social stigma surrounding these two diseases.”
Indeed, Fisher talked candidly about her bipolar in the one-woman-show Wishful Drinking, which she also adapted into a bestselling book.
Fisher’s brother, Todd Fisher, commented on his sister’s death on Friday in the Los Angeles Times, stating that her addictions “slowly but surely put her health in jeopardy over many, many years. I honestly hoped we would grow old together, but after her death, nobody was shocked.”
Carrie Fisher’s mother, Hollywood actress Debbie Reynolds, died from a stroke the day after her daughter’s death.
In addition to her role as Princess Leia, Fisher is renowned for her critically acclaimed novel Postcards From the Edge, about an actress with addiction problems, which was also turned into a movie. She also served as a surrogate script supervisor for several Hollywood films.
We still haven’t seen the last of Carrie Fisher. Before her death, she completed a reprising role as Princess Leia in the upcoming Star Wars: The Last Jedi, due out Dec. 15.
May the Force be with her.
