Corey Haim’s mom says the LA coroner called her this morning to give her a heads-up that her son died of pulmonary congestion.
Judy Haim told Maria that she received an early courtesy call from the LA County Coroner’s Office who told her that an autopsy found her son had an enlarged heart and his lungs were filled with water. His cause of death was due to pulmonary congestion.
The Coroner’s Office also told Access that prescription bottles containing four different medications were taken from his room. His mother and manager told the Coroner’s Office those medications were the only ones he was taking, but the Coroner could not confirm if the medications were found in his body.
I don’t know anything about pulmonary congestion, and I’ll wait to weigh in on this until we have a report from the actual LA coroner.
Meanwhile, folks are coming out of the woodwork to talk about Haim and his struggles with drug addiction. Up now: Some actress named Tiffany Shepis who was engaged to Corey. (Actually, Tiffany appears to be a very successful horror flick star. Her IMDB page goes on forever, although you’ve never heard of a single one of her movies.)
The 30-year-old horror film actress and former E! Wild On guest host first met the Lost Boys star “years ago.” When his substance abuse became a problem, she bent over backward to try to help sober him up.
“I was trying, like everyone wants to do, to be Mother Teresa and help somebody, like Corey [Feldman] did and tons of other people in the past,” she says. “I moved him out to Arizona thinking it would help and get him away from everything and the people who were setting him up to fail.”
Shepis claims she’s a “pretty big advocate against” taking drugs, but it wasn’t until she realized she was unable to force Haim to change that she knew she had to put an end to the relationship.
“It didn’t work out,” she says of the move to Tucson. “I broke everything off before he left. There was just no progression, and if somebody doesn’t want to get better…”
The pair regained contact when Haim returned to Los Angeles in early 2009, but stopped speaking six months ago.
“I would go back and forth,” she says of their communication. “I would get insane phone calls, insane emails. Like stuff that you can’t even imagine a person saying to another person. And then I would run into him and he would look half OK and look like he’d gained some weight. I think he had like little mini, two-week instances of sobriety and then hard-core falloffs.”
Shepis says the star’s weapon of choice was typically prescription meds rather than illegal drugs.
“It was only pills,” she says.
It always seems so distasteful when people clamor for TV time after a loved one has passed away. But I guess I wonder what I’d do in the same position. Do these people go into these interviews thinking they’re doing the right thing — taking a chance to eulogize their deceased loved one and remind the world of how loved he or she was — and then get steered off-course by tough interview questions? Or are they all like “Fuck yeah someone died and now I get to be on TV!!!” Or is it somewhere in between?
Lungs full of puss, OD. What’s the diff in Hollywood?
Opiod overdose can lead to pulmonary edema (fluid in the lungs). Opiods can slow down breathing and the heart so much that circulation is effected and fluids begin to pool in the lungs. I’m just sayin’.
I think that sometimes the venting is actually a way of expressing what may have been a very long-held frustration and sorrow about the addict’s chosen path to self-destruction.
You start to review your efforts to change them, to question whether what you did was enough, was right…
The public statements can be a way to tell people that those around the addict loved that person and did the best they could to change them, not just to grab at a chance for self-agrandizement.
My heart is breaking!
Even on that “Two Corey’s,” show one could see that death was eminent for Corey Haim. He was the better looking of the two IMHO. His life was filled with bottom feeders built on a life where he suffered the awful remnants of child sexual abuse. My heart goes out to his mother! :-(
PoliteTia, you are too precious to be exposed to this kind of deviant lifestyle and its inevitable tragic results. Please keep thinking about ponies and sweet, sweet feed corn.
I think we all need to realize this is going to be the Cass Elliott choking on a ham sandwhich sort of thing. No matter what the real story is, he is going to be thought of as a druggie who died of an overdose.
i thought it was crackers.
Mmmmmm, vodka and crackers, mmmmmmmm.
I think Feldman on Larry King was sincere. He’s exactly right—-where the heck was all of this concern for Haim for all of the years he struggled?
Most of the people commenting on this are looking for press.
How many years do we give Lohan? Haim lasted way longer than I expected.
What do you expect to happen? Hollywood shouldn’t be a place where stupid celebrities are coddled and helped thier entire fucking lives. It’s called show business for a reason – not show victim.
“I don’t know anything about pulmonary congestion, and I’ll wait to weigh in on this until we have a report from the actual LA coroner.”
bah say what? you already wrote a piece being all DRUGS DRUGS DRUGS KILLED HIM DRUGS
Here are two quotes by Corey Haim on imdb.com:
“I was numb and I had lots of swollen lymph nodes, my heart was hurting and I had blood clots in my arm and leg.” – on his drug-induced stroke.
“I did cocaine for about a year and a half, then it led to crack. I started on the downers which were a hell of a lot better than the uppers because I was a nervous wreck. But one led to two, two led to four, four led to eight, until at the end it was about 85 a day – the doctors could not believe I was taking that much. And that was just the valium – I’m not talking about the other pills I went through.”
and brittany murphy reportedly died of pneumonia but all you wanted to blame it on was drugs. (not saying they didn’t play a factor)
Just because the autopsy showed an enlarged heart doesn’t mean that was the cause of death. It’s not on his death certificate yet, even the coroner’s report is pending toxicology results. I’m guessing if his system was clean then it was the enlarged heart/fluid in the lungs that killed him. If he had a high amount of drugs in his system – then it was probably the drugs!
Yup- pulmonary congestion is medical speak for drug overdose. People often don’t realize that when you take too much opiates there are actually physical, medical ramifications like pulmonary edema, which is what actually kills you. You don’t just keel over dead…the drugs are compromised your bodies ability to carry out basic life necessities.
I don’t think there can be much disagreement about the fact that his drug use ruined his life while he was alive. That holds true whether he died of drugs or something completely unrelated.
So there is not an out of control drug problem in Hollywood – everyone just has pulmonary congestion. Is that how people spin it who don’t want to accept that their loved one died from drugs? Such a shame…
Hollywood stars are not the only people in this country who abuse drugs, and I include alcohol as a drug. So why bash Hollywood? Why don’t we encourage sexual abuse survivors to come forward and put all these sick molesters in jail for the rest of their lives as well as encourage drug treatment and 12 step programs. Find and promote solutions instead of judging and condeming others. Blogs on the internet seem to show me how intolerant and hateful people really are – so sad.