Answer Addiction

Tag: Cory Monteith

  • Lea Michele, "Glee" Castmates Post Tributes To Corey Monteith 

    Lea Michele, "Glee" Castmates Post Tributes To Corey Monteith 

    Last weekend marked the sizxth anniversary of Monteith’s 2013 overdose death. 

    The late actor Corey Monteith was remembered via social media posts by his Glee co-stars, including his former girlfriend, Lea Michele, who has paid tribute every year on social media since his death from an accidental overdose in 2013.

    Michele posted an image of the sun behind clouds over a body of water with the message “The light always remains,” while fellow castmates Kevin McHale, Amber Riley and others also remembered their friend with their own posts.

    Monteith died in a Vancouver hotel room from an overdose caused by a toxic combination of heroin and alcohol, among other substances, on July 13, 2013.

    “He Was Not His Addiction”

    Michele, who met Monteith while both were starring on the Fox series and dated him from 2012 to 2013, has posted images and/or messages about the actor on each anniversary of his death, and carries more permanent tributes to him on her person in the form of several tattoos, including his Glee character’s football jersey number.

    In a 2014 interview with Seventeen, Michele said that she “only had happy memories of Cory. He was not his addiction – unfortunately, it won. But that wasn’t who he was. Cory made me feel like a queen every day.”

    In addition to Michele, Monteith’s co-star Kevin McHale posted an image of the actor on his Instagram page, with a caption that read, “The sweetest boy. Forever.”

    Amber Riley’s Instagram post featured a candid of her with Monteith and the caption “6 years without those bear hugs.” And Heather Morris commented on Jenna Ushkowitz’s post by writing, “Missing him a lot lately.”

    Their co-star, Matthew Morrison, later added, “I love this pic!”

    His Struggle

    Monteith’s struggle with drugs and alcohol began in his early teens, which he described in a 2011 interview with Parade as a period in which he “burned a lot of bridges.” He entered rehab for the first time at the age of 19, and earned headlines in 2013 for an on-set intervention by cast and crewmembers that resulted in a stint in rehab that same year.

    After completing a 30-day period of treatment in April, Monteith was found dead in a room at the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel on July 13. He was 31 years old.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Cory Monteith Took Pain Meds For Dental Work Before Fatal Overdose

    Cory Monteith Took Pain Meds For Dental Work Before Fatal Overdose

    “He had a lot of medication in his system, which was not good for his body coming out of rehab,” the actor’s mother recently revealed.

    The late actor Cory Monteith had been taking pain medication after a “massive” dental procedure he’d had not long before his fatal overdose on July 13, 2013, according to his mother Ann McGregor.

    The Canadian actor, known for his role as Finn Hudson on the TV series Glee, died in a Vancouver hotel room from a toxic drug mixture including heroin, alcohol, and traces of morphine and codeine, according to the coroner’s report. He was 31 at the time.

    Around the fifth anniversary of his tragic death, his mother discussed his use of pain medication post-dental work between May and July of 2013.

    “He had a lot of medication in his system, which was not good for his body coming out of rehab,” she said, according to Washington, D.C.’s WENN. “He didn’t have enough drugs in his system to kill him, but for some reason it did because of his intolerance.”

    Journalist and author Maia Szalavitz explained the effect that abstinence-based treatment programs like the one Monteith attended in the spring prior to his death will have on a person’s tolerance.

    “Monteith followed the pattern of the 90% of opioid addicts who are coerced into 12-step recovery and denied an adequate period of maintenance treatment: He relapsed,” she wrote in her commentary, published in The Fix.

    Szalavitz explained that the risk of overdose “is highest in the initial few months” after a period of abstinence, because a person’s tolerance to the drug will drop during that time.

    Not only was the actor “likely not informed” about this heightened risk of overdose from his treatment program, he was not given the option to use medications specifically to aid his recover such as methadone, buprenorphine, and naloxone, which Szalavitz says would have dramatically reduced the risk of overdose.

    When Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy discovered that Monteith was using again, he convinced the actor to enter a 30-day treatment program in April 2013, putting the show on hold.

    Prior to that, the actor publicly discussed his near-decade-long recovery in Parade magazine in 2011, saying that he was “lucky to be alive.”

    He first committed to sobriety at the age of 19. “I was done fighting myself,” he told Parade. “I had a serious problem.”

    In his memory, his mother McGregor works to empower youth in the fine arts, through the British Columbia-based Amber Academy in Canada.

    “Cory believed in prevention, rather than trying to fix people,” she said. “He wanted to give children opportunities to shine and feel good about themselves so they wouldn’t turn to drugs.”

    View the original article at thefix.com