#91: Todd Bridges’ Drug Woes

Todd Bridges paved the way for future f*cked-up child stars, carving out a destructive trail of drugs, violence, and murder that standardized the destiny of kid actors — especially those on his own hit show. The adorable teen — who ended his run as Willis Drummond on Diff’rent Strokes in 1986 — was busted just two years after the show’s end for attempting to murder a drug dealer while crazy on a coke binge. The actor was acquitted, but found himself facing the same charge in 1997 after attacking someone with a car — and was acquitted once more, making him one of the only child stars ever to experience good luck in later life.

Co-stars Dana Plato and Gary Coleman also endured the rough reality of post-sitcom fame. Dana posed for Playboy, was busted for drug possession a few times, and OD’d in 1999 at age 35. Gary went bankrupt and was nailed for assault while working as a security guard. But it was Todd — the first of the three to fall — who would prove the only one to come out OK on the other side of disaster.

The actor finally got sober and now spends his time speaking to kids about the dangers of drugs (he’s an expert, clearly), and attempting a second go at fame on shows like Skating with Celebrities and Everybody Hates Chris. Of his murky past, Todd admits, “The bottom line is I’ve made stupid choices. But I got my life together now and that’s the difference. I’m not the same idiot I used to be.”

We all knew Whitney Houston wanted to dance with somebody, we just had no idea she’d end up waltzing with a crack pipe. The singer had barreled through the eighties and nineties racking up #1 hits and the occasional flop (like marrying the dysfunctional Bobby Brown. After selling over nine million copies of The Bodyguard soundtrack and stockpiling six Grammys, she decided to move on to something more, uh, super f*cking illegal.

In early 2000 Whitney was busted lugging weed through a Hawaii airport. As if that wasn’t bad-ass enough, she inspired Lohans everywhere by skipping shows and losing enough weight to scare even Nicole Richie. Chatting with Diane Sawyer in 2002, she admitted to, well, everything. “My business is sex, drugs, rock and roll…I partied a lot.’’ When asked by Sawyer about her drug of choice–“Is it alcohol? Is it marijuana? Is it cocaine? Is it pills?’’–Whitney answered, ‘‘It has been at times.’’ Sawyer: ‘‘All?’’ Houston: ‘‘At times.’’ But even Whitney had her limits: “I make too much money for me to ever smoke crack…crack is whack.” Whack enough to send the fallen songbird to rehab in 2004. She has yet to make a solid comeback–unless having her husband yank a “dootie bubble” from her ass counts–but at least she’s made headlines dumping Brown for Ray J, brother of Brady and on-camera lover of Kim Kardashian.

Lucky for Scandalist, Whitney’s daughter is continuing the family addiction tradition. Pics of then 13-year-old Bobbi Kristina exhaling what looked like marijuana smoke popped up on the Web in 2007. So much for teaching children well and letting them lead the way . . .

Notorious bigmouth Rush Limbaugh began his career in radio as a DJ in Pittsburgh, and didn’t start clogging the airwaves with Righteous blabber until the mid-eighties. His show went national in 1988, and when the Republicans swept Congress in ‘94, his fat-cat pals named him “honorary member of Congress” in thanks for all he did to ensure their majority rule. And with that, the King of the Conservative Party was born.

But just because this cigar-fiend dished a diehard conservative creed didn’t mean Rush lived by his own rules. In October 2003–the chunky chat-man confirmed National Enquirer reports that he was addicted to prescription painkillers and was headed for rehab. When prosecutors lobbied the court to trash his doctor-patient confidentiality rights so that they could interrogate his docs, Rush found an unlikely ally in the ACLU, who went to bat for him. He was eventually busted for “doctor shopping” (visiting multiple providers to score prescriptions) and turned himself in on April 28, 2006. Prosecutors agreed to drop the charges if he’d cough up $30,000 to cover the investigation’s costs, undergo therapy for 18 months, and submit to regular drug testing. Rush took the deal, and the case was closed.

While Limbaugh’s drug disgrace could have ensured his downfall, the hoopla surrounding his shady pill obsession proved to be a lot of hot air–just like him! In July 2008 Rush signed a contract extension that will keep him gabbing through 2016–for a record-breaking $400 million.

Courtney Love sat down with Vanity Fair writer Lynn Hirschberg to debut herself as Nirvana front-man Kurt Cobain’s wife with a rock star career of her own, but she ended up temporarily losing her newborn infant. “We went on a binge,” she told Hirschberg. “I did heroin for a couple of months.” The catch: her “binge,” in January1992, overlapped with her pregnancy.

When the article hit newsstands in September 1992, Children’s Services of L.A. removed baby Frances Bean from the Cobain household. After several months of legal wrangling (and a voicemail from Cobain calling Hirschberg and another reporter “insane c*nts”), the couple regained custody.

Despite her father shooting himself in the head when she was a toddler, being taken away yet again from her mother for 15 months when she was 12 (after Courtney overdosed in 2003), and having an “alter ego” named Cherry Kookoo, Frances Bean appears to be relatively stable. In 2008 she became an intern at Rolling Stone. It looks like she’s following in Hirschberg’s footsteps!

John Belushi’s hilarious portrayal of Bluto Blutarsky–a whiskey-guzzling, toga-partying frat boy in Animal House–rocked audiences with laughter. But the real-life hard-partying ways of the Saturday Night Live comedian, which led to his OD via speedball at the age of 33, were not so funny.

On the night of March 4, 1982, John went out for some Hollywood debauchery with druggie/groupie pal Cathy Smith and SNL writer Nelson Lyon. Between stops at a restaurant, nightclubs, and ultimately John’s bungalow at the notorious Chateau Marmont, he ingested mass quantities of liquor, cocaine, and heroin. Famous party friends Robert De Niro and Robin Williams stopped by, but left after allegedly being creeped-out by Belushi’s drugged-up state and shady pals. Williams reportedly said, “If you ever get up again, call.” Belushi never did. His trainer Bill “Superfoot” Wallace found his horribly discolored corpse the next morning, curled in the fetal position with his tongue sticking out of his mouth.

Belushi had been battling problems with overeating, nicotine, pills, cocaine, heroin, and alcohol, but Cathy Smith told the National Enquirer that, ultimately, “I killed John Belushi. I didn’t mean to, but I am responsible.” She revealed that she accidentally injected lethal amounts of heroin into his system, at his request, hours before he died. Smith served 15 months in a California prison and John was buried in Martha’s Vineyard below a tombstone that reads, “He made us laugh, and now he can make us think.”

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River Phoenix’s 1993 overdose was not the first tragic death of a young actor nor the last, but you wouldn’t know it from the number of songs that have been written to honor and mourn the 23-year-old Hollywood casualty. Kurt Cobain, REM, Beyoncé, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rufus Wainwright, Tom Petty, and many more have paid musical respect to the handsome young star, whose death from a mix of heroin and cocaine helped highlight the rise of heroin chic.

River didn’t live long enough to become a true matinee idol (how many people have actually seen Running On Empty, which got him his Academy Award nom at 18?). But prominent roles in films ranging from My Own Private Idaho to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade promised a fascinating career for the Phoenix, who enamored many with his political activism. He had no previous drug history, and many were shocked when River died on the sidewalk outside of Johnny Depp’s club, the Viper Room, following a night of hard partying. Brother Joaquin, who would eventually be nominated for an Oscar himself, almost quit acting after his desperate 911 call was played on TV.

Despite claims that River’s last words were “No paparazzi, I want anonymity,” a photographer broke into the funeral home, and sold a snap of his corpse to the National Enquirer for $5,000.

There’s a party at Rick James’s house, so grab a friend and bring a crack pipe! Perhaps that’s what 24-year-old Frances Alley was told before heading over to Rick’s West Hollywood home one night in 1991.

Hits like “Give it to Me” and “Superfreak” made Rick one of the biggest Motown stars of the ’70s and ’80s, but his fame began to fade during the following decade. When M.C. Hammer sampled Rick’s “Superfreak” on “U Can’t Touch This” in 1990, Rick reportedly made $30 million off the song, which more than supported his alleged $15,000-per-week cocaine habit. It was during a coke binge that Rick and his girlfriend Tanya Hijazi tied Alley up, forced her to perform sexual acts, and burned her legs and abdomen with the hot end of a crack cocaine pipe. And then, a year later–while James was out on bail–music executive Mary Sauger testified that when she’d gone to his hotel room for a business meeting, Rick and Tanya proceeded to beat her and hold her prisoner for 20 hours.

Rick spent nearly three years in Folsom State Penitentiary and was released in 1996. He continued to release mildly successful albums, including Urban Rhapsody in 1997 and Anthology in 2002, but never quite regained his “Superfreak” status. He was found dead of a heart attack in his Burbank apartment in 2004 with traces of Xanax, Valium, Wellbutrin, Celexa, Vicodin, marijuana, cocaine, and Ecstasy in his bloodstream.

Q: What do you do if you are a floundering rock star and you want to be immortalized into an icon? A: Die!

Elvis Presley had shot to fame in the late fifties with hit songs like “Hound Dog” and “All Shook Up,” which sent teenage girls howling at the pelvis-shaking wonder and made him the third-bestselling recording artist of all time. But twenty years later his star was fading–as fast as his dependency on painkillers, uppers, and depressants was rising. And then, in 1977, his fiancée Ginger Alden found the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll lying in a pool of his own vomit on the bathroom floor of his Memphis mansion, Graceland. He died of heart failure at 42.

A former member of his backup band recalled the King’s bizarre behavior at a concert shortly before his death: “He walked onstage and held on to the mike for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody was scared.”

Maybe Elvis would have made a comeback, but his shocking sudden death–followed by conspiracy theories and Elvis “sightings” that continue to this day—helped to secure his position as a rock icon.

Junkie-turned-Oprah-approved faith healer James Frey’s story was too good to be true. His 2003 memoir A Million Little Pieces uncovered a layer of hell somewhere beneath rock-bottom, with our Hemingway-on-heroin hero relating his life of drug peddling, crack-whore sex, and oral surgery gone wrong. Truth was truly stranger than fiction–and Oprah hailed the Frey’s courageous attempt to tell it like it was.

Except it wasn’t. Mug-shot website The Smoking Gun smelled a rat. A rat with Frey’s trademark odor of snot, urine, vomit, and blood. Investigation revealed that Frey’s criminal record amounted to a few speeding tickets. His story was about as reliable as the Hitler diaries.

Hell hath no fury like Oprah scorned. In January 2007, she gave Frey an on-air dressing-down like we haven’t seen since Jon Stewart’s Crossfire shit-fit. Frey’s work now occupies the fiction section of your local bookstore.

Watch Oprah turn on James Frey:

[Charles Bottomley]

Heath Ledger was one of those special Hollywood types which rarely surface in that land of vapidity and vanity—a freakish combination of rugged good looks, startling talent, and a desire to live a grounded life out of the public eye. So it was no surprise that the world reacted with straight-up shock to his sudden death from an accidental overdose of prescription pills one January afternoon in 2008—and continued staring with mouths agape as the sordid details came tumbling out.

Prior to his death, the actor had recently split from fiancée and Brokeback Mountain co-star Michelle Williams, and had spent the fall partying at NYC’s most exclusive hot spots, wrapped in the arms of various supermodels. But when his masseuse, who also worked for Mary-Kate Olsen, phoned the tiny starlet upon discovering Heath’s body, a secret relationship between the actor and the twin was revealed.

Heath had admitted to struggling seriously with a sleeping problem while filming The Dark Knight, and posthumous medical tests revealed six different drugs in his system. His death cast a shadow over the much-hyped new Batman film, and his performance as the Joker has led to whispers of an Oscar nod. Sadly, it may also have been a catalyst for the downward spiral that led to his tragic demise.

Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight [Warner Bros.]

Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain [Focus Features]

Heath Ledger [Photo by J.P. MOCZULSKI/AFP/Getty Images]

Heath Ledger [Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images]

Heath Ledger [Photo by Sion Touhig/Getty Images]