Opiate Abuse and addiction are serious issues among members of every demographic, from high school students with once-bright futures to business professionals and major celebrities. In recent years, we have lost many talented celebrities far too soon at the hands of opioid overdose – including Juice WRLD, a young rapper who passed away at the age of 21.
Table of Contents
The Tragic End of Juice WRLD
The rap artist, whose real name was Jarad A. Higgins, passed away after suffering a major seizure in 2019. Because the rap artist was so young and was in relatively good health (with no history of seizure disorders), his death came as a shock to many of his fans. Police were searching his private jet when he began seizing, and he later passed away at the hospital.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office shared the findings of his toxicology report publicly, suggesting that he had passed away as the direct result of an accidental drug overdose. Large amounts of codeine and oxycodone were found in his bloodstream at the time of death. Because America is currently in the midst of a major, national opioid epidemic, the fact that Juice WRLD lost his life to an opiate overdose was not surprising to many.
Statistic About Opioid Overdose in America
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, nearly 50,000 Americans lost their lives to accidental opioid overdose during the same year that Juice WRLD passed away. Not only does prescription opiate addiction deeply affect the lives of everyone it touches, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the economic impact of opiate abuse, addiction, and overdose is also severe, and causes the US an average of $78.5 billion annually.
Recorded fatalities include those that directly involve prescription painkillers like codeine and oxycodone, illicit opiates like heroin, and synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Most people who abuse these drugs end up overdosing accidentally – the majority of the time, these overdose deaths involve fentanyl, a synthetic opioid around 100 times more potent than morphine. This begs the question – was Juice WRLD abusing opiates before he passed away, or has he prescribed these medications for legitimate medical purposes?
Was Juice WRLD Abusing Opiate Painkillers?
Opioid narcotics – more specifically fentanyl – have been responsible for the untimely deaths of many American rap artists in recent years. Juice WRLD wasn’t the only artist who lost his life to a prescription painkiller. In 2017, Lil Peep suffered a drug-related overdose after combining Xanax with fentanyl. In 2018, Mac Miller – a talented young artist with an extremely bright future ahead of him – lost his life to an overdose involving fentanyl, cocaine, and alcohol.
Even globally famed musician Prince lost his life in 2016 at the hands of a fentanyl overdose. While the coroner did not include fentanyl in Juice WRLDs toxicology report, there is a good chance that the rap artist could have lost his life that way if he had avoided this specific overdose.
The young artist was born in 1998 in Chicago, Illinois, and over the years as he gained more and more fame, he had several interviews during which he mentioned drug use. He mentioned abusing benzodiazepine medications like Xanax and Valium, he mentioned smoking marijuana and in one specific interview, he mentioned “lean,” a drug that is made by combining potent cough syrup with soda. Because of his history of substance use, there is a very good chance that he was using codeine and oxycodone recreationally at his time of death.
Garden State Treatment Center and Opiate Abuse Recovery
At Garden State Treatment Center, we have extensive experience treating men and women of all ages who have been struggling with prescription painkiller addiction. We understand that because medications like codeine and oxycodone are so widely prescribed, it can be difficult to put down these medications once you start abusing them.
As a result of this, entering into a residential treatment program is extremely important. To learn more or to begin your opiate addiction recovery journey, contact us today.