Dr. Drew Suggests Hayden Panettiere May Have Concealed A Relapse

Dr. Drew Pinsky knows as much about addiction as just about anybody. Listen, I think there's a good probability she was sober for an extended period of time. She was on, took a long-term course of treatment, like eight months, and after that began identifying as, she started talking like a sober person. But what takes somebody out after a year or two of sobriety, it's things like relationships that often take people out. So I wouldn't, although the drug dealer has a certain amount of blame to be had here in her demise, but it's not as though he showed up at her doorstep and said, here, Hayden, take this. Something already was underway. So can somebody take an oxy and still present as clean and sober and not do it so excessively that they're slurring, that they're falling and all? Oh, for sure, for sure. Part of the syndrome is lying, obfuscating, dissembling. That's not a flaw, it's a feature of the disorder. And when they have a relapse, particularly after some sustained sobriety, they are deeply ashamed of it, and they often hide it for a while. But I want to contextualize for you guys how common these synthetic opioid deaths are in this country. There are around 4,000 per month synthetic opioid deaths, but about 5% of those are adulterated pills. So that's about 150, 160 deaths per month. And that's down. In 2023, the DEA was testing for adulterated products in the pills that they were finding on the street, and fentanyl lethal doses was found in 2023 in 76% of the doses on the street. Why are dealers putting fentanyl into these pills anyway? It just seems like a stupid thing to do. You're killing off your customers. Right. I agree with you. I don't think they believe they're putting, or they understand that they've got lethal amounts in there. They want the person hooked. They want them happy. They want them coming back as a customer. The lethality, I don't understand that black market. I'm just like you. That's mysterious to me. And let's remind ourselves, when this happened, my first question was, did a physician give her these meds in the first place? No, but she's already getting OxyContin from a prescriber who said, hey, we're getting too into this, too far. And then she went to the street. I don't know. The one thing we do know, though, is this isn't somebody who went to a doctor three months before. This is a long time drug dealer. I just want to, again, point out, to my ear and eye, she had real sobriety and then went out. And the two things that commonly take people out is a problematic relationship or the medical system. You're saying that she certainly seemed to be sober for some period of time. But we also believed that she and Brian were broken up from time to time. We've, for years, referred to them as on and off. But what we've learned since her death is that they were always together. Well, if she was lying about that, she was lying about everything. Listen, I've been fooled by the best, my friend. I always get amused when my peers are mad when patients lie to them because that's the nature of the illness. And my job is to try to figure out what's real. They don't even know they're lying many times. But rigorous honesty is the cornerstone of them being able to stay sober.