{"id":870,"date":"2008-01-23T16:09:09","date_gmt":"2008-01-23T16:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/heath-ledger-dies-battling-dru.html"},"modified":"2008-01-23T16:09:09","modified_gmt":"2008-01-23T16:09:09","slug":"heath-ledger-dies-battling-dru","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/heath-ledger-dies-battling-dru.html","title":{"rendered":"Heath Ledger Dies Battling Drugs and Depression"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to Beyond Blue reader (and Exploring Faith Group Club administrator) Priscilla Warner for the link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.news.com.au\/heraldsun\/story\/0,21985,23099380-661,00.html\">an interesting article on Health Ledger&#8217;s death by HeraldSun.com. To get to the article, click here.<\/a> It begins:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>HEATH Ledger was battling drug addiction and depression in the lead-up to his tragic death yesterday.<br \/>\nThe acclaimed actor was found naked and unconscious in his $26,000-a-month Manhattan apartment, surrounded by prescription anti-anxiety and sleeping pills.<br \/>\nLedger&#8217;s parents, Kim and Sally, and his sister, Kate, said his death was a terrible accident.<br \/>\n&#8220;He was a down-to-earth, generous, kind-hearted, life-loving and unselfish individual who was an inspiration to many,&#8221; his father said outside the family home in Perth.<br \/>\nNew York police sources said the signs pointed to either an accidental overdose or suicide.<br \/>\nLedger, 28, reportedly spent several days at a drug rehabilitation clinic, battling an addiction to heroin, after his split from fiancee Michelle Williams in September.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to Beyond Blue reader (and Exploring Faith Group Club administrator) Priscilla Warner for the link to an interesting article on Health Ledger&#8217;s death by HeraldSun.com. To get to the article, click here. It begins: HEATH Ledger was battling drug addiction and depression in the lead-up to his tragic death yesterday. The acclaimed actor was&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Heath Ledger Dies Battling Drugs and Depression - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/heath-ledger-dies-battling-dru.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Heath Ledger Dies Battling Drugs and Depression - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Thanks to Beyond Blue reader (and Exploring Faith Group Club administrator) Priscilla Warner for the link to an interesting article on Health Ledger&#8217;s death by HeraldSun.com. To get to the article, click here. It begins: HEATH Ledger was battling drug addiction and depression in the lead-up to his tragic death yesterday. The acclaimed actor was&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/heath-ledger-dies-battling-dru.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-01-23T16:09:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Heath Ledger Dies Battling Drugs and Depression - Beyond Blue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/heath-ledger-dies-battling-dru.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Heath Ledger Dies Battling Drugs and Depression - Beyond Blue","og_description":"Thanks to Beyond Blue reader (and Exploring Faith Group Club administrator) Priscilla Warner for the link to an interesting article on Health Ledger&#8217;s death by HeraldSun.com. 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