When a Recovery Princess Needs a Harm Reduction Intervention

One admirer of Carrie Fisher wrote movingly on Sobriety for Women of Fisher's death, age 60, last December, as a role model for recovery.

A Princess of Substance Abuse Recovery and Role Model

When I heard the news that Carrie Fisher, (better known to the world as Princess Leia for Star Wars) had passed away I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I was on my way to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at lunch, so in the car I turned on the Star Wars Theme song and began to cry. I wasn’t crying because the Princess of Alderaan, Imperial Senator and General of the Resistance had died. The reason for my tears was that one of the true, outspoken female role models of substance abuse recovery and eating disorders had passed away.

The toxicology report for Fisher has now been released. It found cocaine, heroin, methadone, and ecstasy in her system.

While the presence of these drugs was widely noted, in addition, Fisher was taking the prescription meds Abilify (an anti-psychotic), Prozac (an anti-depressant) and Lamictal (an anti-convulsant used to treat bipolar disorder). These prescription drugs are important because some studies find them to be the most common route to drug poisoning.

In a study of drug deaths in Victoria, Australia, where such deaths are rising rapidly, prescription meds were present in 82 percent of cases. First on the list were benzodizapines (one of the drugs present in Philip Seymour Hoffman's death due to "acute mixed drug intoxication"), followed by opioids, anti-depressants, and anti-psychotics—all three of which Fisher was using.

Carrie Fisher was not in good health—she died of cardiac arrest on a plane flight into LAX. But she was maintaining the aura of sobriety, supposedly meaning abstinence:

In 2005 when Gregory Stevens, a Republican lobbyist, spent the night in her bed and died, things changed for Carrie Fisher. He died of a drug overdose and Carrie blamed herself. This event caused her to go back to rehab and she remained sober, so we think for the rest of her life.

Perhaps she was embarrassed by her oft-documented drug use and addiction. Perhaps she enjoyed the role of recovery princess and role model, and her legion of fans would never allow her to release it. But maintaining this falsehood/fantasy must have been horribly taxing.

Moreover, she couldn't allow herself to get help to organize her chaotic drug use to preserve her life. Such help would require that she acknowledge her drug use across the board, called harm reduction.

Carrie Fisher needed a harm reduction intervention.

Stanton Peele is author of Recover!: An Empowering Program to Help You Stop Thinking Like an Addict and Reclaim Your Life, and has developed the On-line Life Process Program.