Answer Addiction

Tag: Glee

  • "Glee" Star Jesse Luken Arrested For DUI

    "Glee" Star Jesse Luken Arrested For DUI

    The 35-year-old actor was released on $5,000 bail.

    Jesse Luken, who played Bobby “Boom Boom” Surette on the TV musical Glee, allegedly crashed his car after driving drunk last month. 

    Police in Glendale, California. responded to a call about a single-car crash and found Luken in the driver’s seat of his Toyota, which was driven up onto the curb. The front tire was damaged and the airbag was deployed, according to TMZ.

    Citing law enforcement sources, TMZ reported that Luken smelled strongly of alcohol, which prompted police to administer a field sobriety test. Luken failed that, and was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. 

    Fox News reported that the actor, 35, posted a $5,000 bail and was released from jail. 

    Glee, which aired on Fox, was a hit between 2009 and 2015. However, since the show ended the former cast has had a series of legal entanglements and tragedies. In 2013, the show’s star, Cory Monteith, died of an overdose of heroin and alcohol shortly after completing a 30-day stint in rehab.

    Prior to his death at age 31, Monteith had been open about his addiction, saying that he had been struggling with substance abuse since he was 13. 

    “I don’t want kids to think it’s OK to drop out of school and get high, and they’ll be famous actors, too,” he said. “But for those people who might give up: Get real about what you want and go after it. If I can, anyone can.”

    In 2016, Glee actress Naya Rivera wrote in her memoir about Monteith’s death, and how it affected the cast. 

    “I doubt I’m alone in feeling a lot of regret about his death,” she wrote, according to E! News. “Since he died, a lot of us have spent time wondering and talking about what would have happened if someone had stepped in or confronted him about what was going on. Or what if he’d been trying to talk to someone about what was going on and just thought no one cared?”

    Glee’s director, Adam Shankman, sought treatment for substance abuse disorder in 2013. 

    “His friends and family support him and wish him well on his journey to recovery,” a representative said at the time.  

    In January of 2018, another Glee actor, Mark Salling, was found dead by suicide. Salling pleaded guilty in October 2017 to possession of child pornography. He was facing four to seven years in prison, as well as fines and registration as a sex offender.  

    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