Heath Ledger's Cause Of Death Made Official

It’s taken a couple of weeks, but we finally have a cause of death for Heath Ledger. Hold on to your hat, it’s a shocker: He died from taking too many pills.

The AP reports that the New York City medical examiner has officially tagged his cause of death as an accidental overdose, caused by “acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine.” All of those are apparently drugs he had a prescription for and he was supposed to be taking. For whatever reason, he simply took too much of them all at once.

What the medical examiner isn’t saying is exactly how much of these drugs he had in his system. They’re still calling it an “accidental overdose”, so that would lead one to believe that it wasn’t the amount you’d see if someone was intentionally trying to commit suicide. Instead the examiner insists it was the cumulative effect of all those drugs together, which does seem to make it pretty clear that it was not something Ledger did on purpose.

The much beloved, 28-year-old actor and father was found naked and dead on the floor of an apartment by his masseuse on January 22nd. After finding him and being unable to wake him, she panicked called her friend and employer Mary-Kate Olsen, who sent her private security force over to deal with the matter. Eventually 911 was called, but Ledger had been dead for hours and there was nothing she or anyone else could have done.

Funeral arrangements are currently being planned by his family in their hometown of Perth, Australia.

Josh Tyler