Peaches Geldof died due to heroin overdose**MOD NOTE: NO JOKES**

Tony EH wrote: »

The person I feel sorry for in all of this sorry mess would be her father Bob, as the poor guy has had to look at the people around him betray him and do idiotic activities for years...

...and all in the media limelight too.

I feel for Bob - he's a decent level headed fella. But also for her poor husband and kid, growing up without a mother.

dark crystal wrote: »

I honestly don't think she would have deliberately committed suicide with her baby alone in the house with her.

What I do find a little strange, however, is the fact her last tweet was a photograph of her in her mother's arms. To then go and take heroin whilst caring for her own child (as her mother did) seems baffling.

Someone I knew did. If she was thinking rationally about what's right by the children she wouldn't have done it at all while the baby was in the house tbf, so its not that big a jump to think it may have been deliberate even with the child there. However it happened she obviously wasn't in a good place.

It's just dreadful for her family.

Foxhound38 wrote: »

Why someone in her position, with her education and with her prospects would choose to become a heroin junkie, I'll never know. Did she think it was going to end well?

Perhaps she naively believed the hype that nothing bad ever comes from "recreational" illegal drugs. That's it's only poor, non-famous junkies that die.

It would be nice if people could exercise the capacity for empathy and that rare little gem of 'putting themselves in another's shoes' in these celebrity death threads, as all too often they descend into childish bickering and one-upmanship with no regard for the actual human being in question.

And that's what Peaches Geldof was, a human being. Who just happened to be embroiled in a fcuked up celebrity culture that I'm sure did no good for whatever personal issues she had.

Imagine growing up in an uber-famous family where your parents' every move is scrutinized and publicized. With a drug addict mother who herself had a rake of abandonment issues and who continued that cycle by abandoning her own family after an illicit affair with a flighty rock star. Who then kills himself, not before fathering your half-sister. Imagine then your mother descending back into years of depression and drug addiction, only to be found dead, naked in her bed, after succumbing to the disease.

Imagine then growing up under the shadow that children of an addict/deceased parent have to cope with - the abandonment issues, the erratic behaviour that was normalized in their home, the shame and distrust of others, and all of this while their family's pain was played out in the public eye like the perfect storm that tabloid hacks make their money on.

And imagine then being thrust into the spotlight yourself as a typically mouthy, opinionated, self-centred 15 year old who's courting the same media attention her mother had because, well, maybe that's the only 'normal' she knows? Maybe the erratic behaviour of her own drug-addicted mother who herself was a very troubled woman, had a deep influence on Peaches own behaviour and emotional wellbeing?

I always think of the reports of Paula Yates' very tragic suicide, and at the inquest a friend of hers saying in the lead-up to her death, she rang the house several times, and each time her very young daughter Tiger-Lilly picked up the phone and told her "mummy's in bed". I remember reading that and thinking how intensely sad it was that her mother's destructive, addicted behaviour was just so normal to a toddler.

And that kind of a childhood is very difficult to escape from. It's very difficult to escape the demons of your parents and overcome a very deep dysfunction and grief at such an early stage in your development. Hell, I'm still struggling with a few things that my childhood-self had to deal with and comparatively I had it pretty easy.

Of course the circumstances are shocking, that a 25 year old seemingly topped herself using Class As and while in the company of her very young child. And "anyone who takes heroin" blah blah blah.

But would a bit of thoughtfulness and a reflection on the kind of life this young woman had - despite courting media attention in an unlikeable way and being caught up in the illusion that is celebrity - really be too much to ask for?

Olive8585 wrote: »

I wasn't aware that sympathy needed to be rationed.

For some, sympathy is subject to prejudice. For others, including your good self, it is a fair and regenerating kindness.

Foxhound38 wrote: »

Sorry, does it really still count as high-horsing it to suggest that taking heroin is a bad idea and there isn't really any excuse for ignorance as to the effects of choosing to become a heroin junkie at this stage?

RIP to her, and strength to her poor family in this awful time - but that doesn't mean this isn't the result of simple cause and effect.

Heroin, bad idea. Who doesn't know that by now?

I think everyone knows that, but it mightn't be the thing you factor in if you've stuff like depression going on as well