Corey Haim Dead: Overdose Suspected

Corey Haim used to be somebody

Former teen heart-throb Corey Haim is dead at the age of 38 and, no surprise, an overdose is suspected.

What is surprising is that the LAPD are apparently the source of the OD rumours, which in part explains why they’ve been so widely repeated. Haim’s long history of drug abuse, rehab and re-rehabbing are on the public record but then: so were Brittany Murphy’s and Casey Johnson’s and you didn’t hear a peep out of the authorities at their time of death. The difference?

They were girls.

Well, they were girls with money and good lawyers, right up to the moment they died, and Corey Haim was a broke serial failer who’d had more comebacks than Cher, all of them unsuccessful. People are just readier to tell unpleasant truths about people who have no way of getting back at them (not even via estate lawyers) and who have played the tough guy, as opposed to those two 95-pound waifs. Both of them had infamous tempers not soothed by what they were taking, and Johnson in particular was no stranger to fistfights and dirty deeds, but even the LAPD is socialized to treat girls differently from the young and not-so-young men who form the bulk of their contacts. Though both Johnson and Murphy were over 30, they played on the big-eyed, cute waif look, right up to the moment they punched you in the face.

Haim’s fame came in the classic teen idol manner: a stint of forgettable appearances and one breakthrough movie, The Lost Boys, a film that also put Kiefer Sutherland on the map. The huge, relatively instant stardom gave him freedom and it gave him money and it gave him a support system that said, it’s okay, you’re a star, have some fun!

He did, but some of the choices he made turned him around, grabbed him and rode him like a donkey for the rest of his life, till they finally rode him over a cliff.

Here’s the video he shot in an attempt to prove he was sober enough to work; a video whose failure can probably be attributed to the fact that Haim is quite visibly wasted throughout. The notes claim that his favorite combination was ” ten valium 10 mg, 10 vicodin extra strength and 15 somas,” and while on the one hand it’s hard to believe anyone could take that and retain the ability to form sounds of any kind, when you watch the video you begin to accept it. He did admit, at one point, to taking up to 85 Valium a day.

The Two Coreys was supposed to be a comeback vehicle for both Haim and the more successful, more sober Cory Feldman; it failed after two seasons because Haim couldn’t even stay sober enough to shoot a voyeuristic reality show. And that, my friends, takes some doing.

Here’s the intervention that Feldman staged for Haim on the show; this is the real thing:

Of course, celebrity rehab failed. And failed again. There’s no accurate count I can find of the number of times Haim tried and failed rehab, but here’s an unintentionally illuminating ad he took out in Variety to show that he was tanned, rested and ready for work.

You already know how that ended: on the floor of his apartment, with his mother in the next room.

Corey Haim Variety Ad