Cause & Manner

Danny was found dead in New York City on July 28, 2023, with evidence of drugs. The NY Medical Examiner’s Office performed an autopsy which included a toxicology report. Four months later, we received a phone call from the ME’s office with this brief summary of the cause and manner of Danny’s death:

 

Acute fentanyl intoxication, accidental.

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Danny’s drug of choice was alcohol. He used marijuana as well, but not much else that we were aware of. He quit drinking in February of 2022, and a few months later began to use ketamine to “party” once in a while. He knew that it had clinical use as an antidepressant and knew people who thought it helped them with anxiety and ADHD. Although he hid it from his friends and us, by the summer of 2023 he was using it regularly.

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When we finally received the complete autopsy report, it listed fentanyl and the metabolite of cocaine (benzoylcgonine). There was no ketamine present. 

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I highly recommend Ben Westhoff’s book, Fentanyl Inc: How Rogue Chemists Created the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic, Grove Press, 2019.

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                  Because of its incredible potency, fentanyl is extremely difficult to dose properly. It can be lethal at only two milligrams, an amount barely visible to the eye and far smaller than a dose of heroin. Traffickers “cut” fentanyl into other drugs to give them more kick, unbeknownst to users. Thus, many fentanyl victims think they are taking heroin, cocaine, meth, or prescription pills. But when too much fentanyl is in the mix, it kills almost instantly. (Introduction, p.3).