After months of speculation, a medical examiner has ruled that Tom Petty died of an accidental overdose, according to a statement from the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner. The Hall of Fame musician had taken several pain medications, including Fentanyl (including acetylfentanyl and despropionyl fentanyl), oxycodone and generic Xanax. Other medications included generic Restoril (a sleep aid) and generic Celexa (which treats depression).
TMZ reported that he’d been prescribed the drugs to treat emphysema, knee issues and a fractured hip; the coroner’s report also said he had coronary artery disease. The latter condition had been a persistent problem throughout his final tour. TMZ reported that on the day of his death, he’d learned that the hip had become a full-on break. The pain was likely so bad he took more meds than prescribed.
Although it was reported that Petty had suffered a cardiac arrest when he died last fall, the cause of death on his death certificate read “deferred.” This ruling often occurs in cases where officials don’t want to make a ruling until after an autopsy.
Petty was found unconscious, not breathing at his Malibu home on October 2nd. He was rushed to a hospital where he was placed on life support. Although he had a pulse, doctors found no brain activity when he arrived and the decision was made to pull life support. He died hours later.
The singer had recently completed a 40th anniversary tour with his band, the Heartbreakers. It was intended to be his “last trip around the country,” though he told Rolling Stone he wasn’t going to stop playing. “I need something to do, or I tend to be a nuisance around the house,” he said.
Petty had an unusual relationship with drugs. The one drug he was most open about using was marijuana. “I’m certain I’ve smoked some medical marijuana, yeah,” he told Rolling Stone in 2013, around when medical marijuana became legal in California. “It’s everywhere. I don’t smoke as much pot as I did at one point in my life. But I think the cat’s out of the bag, and it’s gonna be legalized. If you’re gonna sell liquor, you have to sell pot. Liquor’s worse for you. I don’t think pot’s addictive — I never felt like I had to have it, you know. Actually, no, I take that back.” He laughed. “But it is safer than alcohol.”
He also said over the years that he’d experimented with cocaine (“[It] was never a good look,” he told Men’s Journal) and drinking (“I didn’t like the taste or the buzz,” he said). But it was in the late Nineties, when he was in his late 40s and two decasdes after he’d become a superstar, that he developed an addiction to heroin after a bitter divorce from his first wife. “Tried to go cold turkey, and that wouldn’t work,” he said in author Warren Zanes’ book Petty: The Biography. “It’s an ugly fucking thing.” He sought out treatment for his addiction and remarried in 2001.
“Using heroin went against my grain,” Petty said in the book. “I didn’t want to be enslaved to anything. So I was always trying to figure out how to do less, and then that wouldn’t work. Tried to go cold turkey, and that wouldn’t work. It’s an ugly fucking thing.”
Since his death, several artists have paid tribute to Petty onstage. Country artist Jason Aldean dedicated some of his time as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live to sing “I Won’t Back Down.” Bob Dylan performed Petty’s “Learning to Fly” at a concert in Broomfield, Colorado. And Dave Matthews, Emmylou Harris and others sang “Refugee” at a benefit show in Seattle. Petty’s Greatest Hits album subsequently made it to the Number Two spot on the Billboard chart after his death.
He was laid to rest on October 16th at a private service in Pacific Palisades, California.
