Did a Sleep Aid Kill Heath Ledger?

The stories begin to circulate and the news collects: Health Ledger was taking a prescribed anti-depressant, possibly had pneumonia, and was taking prescription Ambien. Could one or a combination of all three have killed him?

It is rare that I get viscerally moved by the news of a celebrity's or high- profile person's death. It is even rarer that I speculate in advance about causes..., until I get more information. But for some reason, reading my emailed LBN (late breaking news) last night (January 22, 2008), I not only felt stunned and expressed my shock aloud, but I questioned the early death of Heath Ledger, baffled and bowled over as I was by the too-soon loss of such a beautiful talent.

Yes, it's cliché: Ledger's death such a shame, he was too young to go, etc., etc.. But really, unlike the ninety-nine year-old who has worked his whole life and tells us on his death bed he is ready to go, is tired and needs to stop, Heath was twenty-eight, was just beginning to deliver a body of work that would only evolve into an oeuvre of Academy and Golden Globe Award status, and was (as far as we have been told) physically healthy.

Again, I am reticent to speculate. The first I read of Ledger's death included a comment by NYPD officers (according to LBN news alert) which started the "story" that "drugs may have been involved". They did not say [or it was not reported at that moment] how they came to infer this possibility. My roommate, when I screamed out the news as I read it, said that this is what one gets for messing with [street] drugs. Yes, okay, but today we learn that those "drugs" are not the drugs one might connect with an "oh-we-expected-as-much" overdose or a "this-was-long-overdue" stopping of an overworked/abused heart. Heath's death was-again, still not confirmed - caused by a prescription sleep aid (and combined contraindications of an antidepressant?).

Aye, sleep aids I (and my friends who introduced me to them) have experimented with have had some typical and expected side effects: grogginess, dizziness, dry mouth, psychological dependency. But according to Tamara McLean and others at The Daily Telegraph (Australia), the particular sleep aid Heath was taking has much more bizarre effects, those the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) responded to as not only effects experienced by over 500 people but as "worrying and potentially dangerous adverse effects."