Carrie Fisher suffers massive heart attack on an airplane - Has passed away at 60

[calculoso]

Isn't the party drug "Molly" drug comprised of cocaine, heroin and MDMA (and maybe more)? My wife has had two friends of friends die of it in the past month... It very well could be that Carrie only knowingly took one drug...

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by calculoso

Isn't the party drug "Molly" drug comprised of cocaine, heroin and MDMA (and maybe more)? My wife has had two friends of friends die of it in the past month... It very well could be that Carrie only knowingly took one drug...

I heard the kids these days inject it straight into their eyeballs while they're snorting the pot.

[Matata]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

I really struggle as to why it's any of our damn business what was in someone's system when they died.

And I'm not judging as I read the story like everyone else.

Humans are pretty much hardwired to recognize success and failure in their environment: "why'd that happen" "oh that's why" "better avoid that if I don't want that to happen to me". It's an essential component of evolution.

[Hockeyguy15]

Originally Posted by calculoso

Isn't the party drug "Molly" drug comprised of cocaine, heroin and MDMA (and maybe more)? My wife has had two friends of friends die of it in the past month... It very well could be that Carrie only knowingly took one drug...

I thought it was "Molly" because there was picture of Molly Ringwald on the pill. I suppose I am out of touch.

[Matata]

Originally Posted by calculoso

Isn't the party drug "Molly" drug comprised of cocaine, heroin and MDMA (and maybe more)? My wife has had two friends of friends die of it in the past month... It very well could be that Carrie only knowingly took one drug...

Molly is supposed to be pure MDMA, Ecstacy is when MDMA is mixed with meth, coke, etc.

It's really hard to die from MDMA, related deaths are usually from dehydration or mixing with other drugs (Fentanyl, alcohol are the likely culprits).

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by Matata

Humans are pretty much hardwired to recognize success and failure in their environment: "why'd that happen" "oh that's why" "better avoid that if I don't want that to happen to me". It's an essential component of evolution.

Is that what's going on? Or maybe related, some base desire to know other people are not as "good" as we are?

[Matata]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

Is that what's going on? Or maybe related, some base desire to know other people are not as "good" as we are?

I would agree that is a negative expression of our compulsion to recognize success/failure (with a healthy dose of tribalism mixed in), but all of our base compulsions can manifest themselves in positive or negative ways, depending on individuals and circumstance, I wouldn't label any of them as inherently 'good' or 'bad'.

[CliffFletcher]

And they're pretty much inseparable. Praising Fisher as some kind of hero for her struggles with substance abuse comes from the same part of our social instincts as expressing disapproval of her death from those substances. You won't get the one without the other. Once we regard the lives of celebrities as something to make moral judgements about we open the door to both praise and criticism.

It would be best if we ignore the private lives of celebrities altogether. But that's unlikely to happen.

[Kybosh]

Originally Posted by Matata

Molly is supposed to be pure MDMA, Ecstacy is when MDMA is mixed with meth, coke, etc.

It's really hard to die from MDMA, related deaths are usually from dehydration or mixing with other drugs (Fentanyl, alcohol are the likely culprits).

Just to add to this, I find that users of clandestine drugs think they know exactly what's inside of their pills but they usually have absolutely zero idea. I don't really care if your dealer is trustworthy, or you're sure it's totally pure, or in the right concentrations. . . unless you're doing some actual chemical analyses (spectroscopy or otherwise) on the product before use, you really have no idea. Even those little colour indicator test kits don't pick up everything, nor tell you the concentrations. Once upon a time, I was working with some narcotics officers and we tested a bunch of different seized pills. Exactly zero of them were 1) as pure as they said or 2) not laced with at least one other compound beyond a filler. Clandestine drugs are a dangerous game.

[Matata]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

It would be best if we ignore the private lives of celebrities altogether. But that's unlikely to happen.

My life would be improved if I didn't know Jimmy Page and John Lennon were demonstrably worse people than Kanye West.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Matata

My life would be improved if I didn't know Jimmy Page and John Lennon were demonstrably worse people than Kanye West.

My love for the Beatles has endured all the biographies I've read showing what dicks they (especially Lennon) were. Page is another story. His monstrous villainy, the savage behaviour of Bonham, and the egregious and uncredited theft of songs make it real tough for me to enjoy Zeppelin anymore.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

And they're pretty much inseparable. Praising Fisher as some kind of hero for her struggles with substance abuse comes from the same part of our social instincts as expressing disapproval of her death from those substances. You won't get the one without the other. Once we regard the lives of celebrities as something to make moral judgements about we open the door to both praise and criticism.

It would be best if we ignore the private lives of celebrities altogether. But that's unlikely to happen.

It's like once Christianity, with its elaborate rituals for death and mourning, receded from the culture, people started looking for something else born out of shallow consumer capitalism and celebrity culture.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by peter12

It's like once Christianity, with its elaborate rituals for death and mourning, receded from the culture, people started looking for something else born out of shallow consumer capitalism and celebrity culture.

Where do you come up with this stuff?

[peter12]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Where do you come up with this stuff?

Books. Check 'em out, buddy. You'll like them.

[CliffFletcher]

You don't even need to read a whole book. Lots of articles on the subject.

Celebrity Deaths and the Future of American Religion

These new religious cultures are mixing with and in some ways replacing older traditions, and providing Americans with a radically different set of conceptions and practices to make sense of death — that most religious of human experiences — in a meaningful way.

So let me be blunt: the cult of celebrity that is prevalent and powerful in society today is one example of a new religious culture, and when the death of a celebrity occurs, whether as a result of old age or a young life cut short by tragedy, the way we talk about it and the rituals we use in the aftermath are just as sacred as sitting shiva or giving a sermon. The parallels between the cult of saints in early Christianity and the cult of celebrity in the age of American empire are obvious, with dead celebrities glorified and idolized for their power (which comes from wealth, fame, and creativity for celebs; and for the saints, power comes from sacrifice, dedication, and faith), and ability to make a mark in the intimate, personal lives of the faithful and teach persuasive moral messages. For the cult of saints, of course, that message was centered on God and Jesus in instructing followers about the meaning of life and how to live it; for the cult of celebrities, less obviously theological but religious through and through, that message is centered on the values of self-expression, mass appeal, and stardom.

- Huffington Post

Christopher Hitchens did a whole program on the hysteria over Diana's death.

Diana, the Mourning After

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

You don't even need to read a whole book. Lots of articles on the subject.

Christopher Hitchens did a whole program on the hysteria over Diana's death.

Diana, the Mourning After

How is that really different from most deaths, just on a grander scale due to notoriety? Do we not still have elaborate rituals for death and mourning? People mourn celebrities because they feel they've in some way touched their lives and are therefore connected to them. I didn't really care about Fisher's death because she didn't really have any kind of profound influence on me or my life. Prince and Bowie, on the other hand, were two people whose work I really enjoyed and I was bummed they weren't going to be putting out anymore work.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by rubecube

How is that really different from most deaths, just on a grander scale due to notoriety? Do we not still have elaborate rituals for death and mourning?

Not much publicly, no. How many funerals has the average 30 year old been to? Two? Back when people lived surrounded by extended family, and were deeply embedded in a community and attended regular religious services, they were in touch with death and grief and mourning all the time. Aunts, grandparents, neighbours. The grocer. Old teachers. Your great-grandparents would have been to more than a dozen funerals by the time they were 30. And these would have been public events shared by the whole community.

Originally Posted by rubecube

People mourn celebrities because they feel they've in some way touched their lives and are therefore connected to them.

Which is a new thing. Do you think your great-grandparents mourned when a vaudevillian or the trombone player in a jazz band died? People still grieve today. But they grieve for different people in different ways. Which was peter's point.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by peter12

It's like once Christianity, with its elaborate rituals for death and mourning, receded from the culture, people started looking for something else born out of shallow consumer capitalism and celebrity culture.

And yet, it's still an improvement.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Your great-grandparents would have been to more than a dozen funerals by the time they were 30. And these would have been public events shared by the whole community.

Aren't you kind of leaving aside the part where death was more common at that time? People are mostly living longer lives now, which means even if I was attending a church regularly, I'm less likely to attend as many funerals as my great-grandparents.

Which is a new thing. Do you think your great-grandparents mourned when a vaudevillian or the trombone player in a jazz band died? People still grieve today. But they grieve for different people in different ways. Which was peter's point.

Do you actually have to go to a funeral to mourn someone? Maybe the rituals have just evolved (e.g. writing messages on deceased person's facebook page to express their grief rather than visiting graves).

[peter12]

Aren't you kind of leaving aside the part where death was more common at that time? People are mostly living longer lives now, which means even if I was attending a church regularly, I'm less likely to attend as many funerals as my great-grandparents.

When did the global mortality rate drop below 100%?