Unlike Notable Others...

...I am still alive.

My first reaction when I read this news was, like many others, "WTF?" Not because it was such a surprise; I mean, if I were inclined to construct a Celebrity Death Pool, Anna Nicole would have been placed in the Exceptions category--the ones put to the side with the understanding that they could go at any minute. You know, along with Courtney Love, Keith Richards, and Pete Doherty.

Mostly I was shocked because of her age--she was only three years older than me--and her recent omnipresence in the news. In the space of six months, there haven't been too many weeks without an Anna Nicole story; her death has guaranteed that there won't be too many weeks without one over the NEXT couple of months, as well.

There are very few positive things to be said here. It's already a given that her poor little baby girl, Dannielynn, is going to have a lot to deal with in her life. Sadly enough, her mother's death may have only swapped one set of problems for another, and even more sadly, I don't think anyone can tell which set of circumstances--living mother or dead--would have been worse, in this case. There aren't many people I would feel comfortable saying that about.

But Anna Nicole was a train wreck. Which was much of her celebrity, in truth; her reality show was based almost totally around her slurring, chemically-addled misadventures. I saw one episode and couldn't bring myself to watch any more, but I read recaps of a couple of seasons and it didn't seem like it was improving. It wasn't funny, to me; it was sad, a case of "there but for the grace of God and the absence of a few bazillion dollars go I."

Which is why my only real hope for the outcome of this case is a selfish one: I hope, when her cause of death comes out, that it's got nothing to do with methadone.

When Daniel Smith, her son, died in September, tabloid-news reporters waited anxiously for the toxicology reports, and they were not disappointed. When it was revealed that Daniel had died of a combination of two common antidepressants and methadone, it set off a spate of "investigative" reports with titles like "Methadone: the Death Drug" and similarly overheated, factually-distorted garbage "news" stories. Apparently the tabloids didn't want to go after Zoloft and Lexapro; maybe Big Pharm's pockets are a little too deep for them to want to concoct similar lies about two well-known prescription drugs. But methadone, I guess, was fair game...only treatment counselors and methadone patients would dare to defend THIS drug.

Lost in the misinformation were the real facts: that methadone for drug treatment is diverted much less often than methadone prescribed for pain, and that drug-treatment programs and their patients are monitored much more stringently than pain clinics and those who prescribe for them. There was the fact that no one could trace where Daniel got this methadone, and the suspicion that he might have gotten it from his mother--who was not, to anyone's common knowledge, a patient in a maintenance-treatment program. Facts don't matter as much when there's a celebrity involved; no matter what the circumstances really were, methadone was now "the death drug", and there were calls to ban its manufacture and sale. Nevermind that there are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on methadone to help them keep off street drugs and help them keep their lives on track--because a celebrity's son died, having combined two other medications with methadone he got from who-knows-where, suddenly methadone was a danger to society. The worst of these "news" stories very nearly gave the impression that giant orange disks of methadone were roaming the streets in packs, possibly armed, looking for innocent throats to jump down, innocent children to poison. I can't remember ever screaming at the television as much as I did in the immediate aftermath of Daniel Smith's death.

So I hope, whatever the facts of Anna Nicole Smith's death are found out to be, that methadone is in no way involved; that it's nowhere to be found on any tox-screen, that the cause of death is so conclusive that there's no cause for speculation, no possibility of another outcry. I hope there's not going to be another spate of anti-methadone propaganda, aimed at those who don't know--or don't THINK they know--anyone who methadone has helped.

Of course, Anna Nicole's history being what it was, I'm thinking maybe I'm hoping for too much.

Regardless, it's a tragedy; for her family, at least, if not for Anna Nicole herself. From what I know of her life--admittedly, no more than the rest of the tabloid-crap-consuming public, which in the grand scheme of things is practically nothing--but from what I know of her life, I can't imagine she was a very happy person. And while I feel bad for her daughter, and for the people (there must have been some) who actually, truly loved her as herself--while I feel sorry for those who loved her, somehow I wonder if maybe she, herself, might not be better off.