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| 'Me? On drugs?'
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It's not like any of has us expected much from the cast of Diff'rent Strokes in recent years. Over the years we've heard stories of Willis shoveling cocaine up his nose and robbing stores, Arnold working as a security guard and getting arrested for various misdemeanors, and Kimberly doing soft-core porn, drugs, and living a life of crime. At least we got the feeling that they were working as a team.
But on Sunday, police revealed that sometimes even the tightest of teams must disband eventually. On Saturday night, at her fiancé's parents' house in Moore, Oklahoma, Dana Plato died of a drug overdose at age 34. Now, we have nothing but sympathy for her friends and family, who are no doubt grieving. But that still doesn't stop us from asking the age-old question: What the hell was she thinking?
According to Sgt. Scott Singer, Dana was discovered "unresponsive and cold to the touch" after taking some medication and a nap. Attempts to resuscitate her at the local hospital failed, and she was pronounced dead. We wonder if the drugs did her in or if napping can in fact be fatal.
"Preliminary reports indicated Ms. Plato may have died as a result of an overdose," Singer said. He also mentioned that the drugs responsible for the overdose were not a lethal mixture of black tar heroin and crack but rather Valium and the painkiller Loritab, both of which were prescribed by a doctor in Tulsa.
Dana had a history of drug problems, as we all know. In 1992, she was given five years probation after she was caught forging Valium prescriptions. This was added to the five years she'd already earned for robbing a video store in Las Vegas in '91. Add to that a tiny little drinking problem, and it's pretty obvious Dana had a hard time keeping her act together. However, in recent weeks, she'd come out of hiding to claim that her bad days were behind her and that she was working seriously on reviving her career. She was hoping to start landing more movie roles, beyond her recent B movie appearances.
In fact, the strangest aspect of this whole saga is that on Friday, the day before her overdose, Dana went on Howard Stern's radio show to defend herself. She claimed she'd been clean and sober for 10 years. However, she also mentioned that she'd been taking painkillers for persistent pain from her wisdom teeth removal - which she had done more than three months ago. Now, we had our wisdom teeth removed, and we only got to take drugs for three days.
If there's anything we've learned from this tragic incident, it's that we obviously went to the wrong doctor.
