Understanding Why Philip Seymour Hoffman had 70 Bags of Heroin in his Possession
On Saturday at around 8pm, Philip Seymour Hoffman reportedly withdrew $1,200 in six installments to pay two men for drugs on Saturday evening at around 8pm.
At around 11am on Sunday, the 46-year-old Oscar-winner was found dead in his $10,000 a month West Village apartment with a hypodermic needle sticking out of his left arm. He was surrounded by 70 bags of heroin and 20 used syringes.
Hoffman’s descent from sobriety to drug-addled star was quick and swift.
It has been claimed that before Christmas he stopped going to AA and started frequenting the Automatic Slims bar.
From there, things really started to spiral out of control with a source telling RadarOnline that Hoffman’s drug habit had allegedly escalated to upwards of $10,000 a month and his preferred narcotics were heroin and the prescription drug Oxycontin.
But isn’t having 70 bags of heroin in is apartment a little extreme? And did he have a death wish?
These are the questions we posed to Addiction specialist Dr. A. R. Mohammad, who is a M.D. is a board-certified expert psychiatrist, an associate professor at USC’s Keck School of Medicine where he teaches addiction medicine, and is the founder and medical director of Inspire Malibu Treatment Center.
Dr.A. R. Mohammad tells CelebZter: “Philip Seymour Hoffman wasn’t on a death wish. People don’t try to die from heroin, they love it too much. He was a high-profile person and it was better for him to buy in bulk because he could afford it and he didn’t need to have so many trips or deliveries with his source.
“With heroin and opiates, it’s easy to build a tolerance so the user needs to use it more often and in higher quantities. People taking Vicodin start with one pill every four hours or so. After four hours, it stops working. Over time, it may take two pills and it might not last for four hours. Because heroin is more powerful, the tolerance is even more profound. One bag might last four hours or so, but over time the user needs more than one bag or more frequently.
“Once you’re hooked you HAVE to keep taking it. It starts with snorting but moves on to injecting because snorting isn’t powerful enough any more.
“It doesn’t make sense to keep going out every day to buy it if you can afford to stock up. It’s safer that way too (from getting caught) – PSH can’t just go out in public without being seen, especially in his neighborhood because everyone knows him. If you smoke a lot of pot, you stock up. It’s the same with heroin, except when you run out of pot, you get bummed out – with heroin, you get sick.”
A wake for Hoffman will take place on Thursday – followed by the funeral on Friday morning
To read a timeline of tragedy: The hours leading to his death, click here.
