details of the death of phillip seymour hoffman. investigators found 50 envelopes of what they believe is it heroin in his apartment. here with the expert analysis, my panel. here s what i m hearing and the people i m talking to, we have a heroin epidemic, in big cities, small cities, big towns, little towns. rich neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods. it s true. the oxycontin was $30 a pill, used to give you the similar hi high. now you can buy heroin, you don t know what they mixed it with. the kids start with snorting it, they don t get high enough they start injecting it. it was in the minority
pharmaceuticals. they cannot keep up with the financial burden. the other piece fatal is combining the other pills such as the ben zo diaz peens and the alcohol. the combination, that s where the lethalness comes in as well. decrease in the respiration. that is according to this autopsy, it was this toxic mix of both alcohol and heroin that ultimately claimed the life of cory monteith. absolutely. he was 13 when he started abusing. absolutely. quickly, elizabeth. he just came out of detox. i want to talk about the appeal to young people. when you can only shoot up heroin, i think young people are like, who wants to put a needle in your arm? now that you can snoort it or smoke it, doesn t have that stigma. bob forrest, cocaine usage, that s also sort of old news. that s something you snort. when you think of snorting heroin is it more toxic? does the body absorb it differently? is that what s making this increasingly deadly for young folks who don t have the tolerance?
it was more about about not fitting in. it was not having i hadn t found myself at all. i had no idea who i was. i had no idea where i was going. according to this autopsy report, his drug of choice most recently was heroin. in the end, that was the drug that would end his life. when you look back through the 70s and the 80s and the 90s, look at these faces. heroin took the lives of dozens of actors, rock stars, river phoenix. john belushi, janis joplin just to name a few. cory monteith s death is highlighting once again an alarming new trend. the substance abuse and mental health services administration is reporting a sharp rise in heroin usage. a 63% increase. when you look back from 2005 to 2011. state by state by state, heroin s deadly grip is increasing. not only that, but a new face of heroin addiction is emerging. and that s why i wanted to talk
the safer ways you can use substances. there s things you can do. there s tools you can have. in massachusetts we have a program. we train drug using folks that are using heroin, their family members and witnesses to that, how to use a drug which reverses a heroin overdose and gives them enough time to get to the e.r. we also need to look at not having people discharge from rehab and be alone. because if they re alone, that s another danger. that s a strong message that has to be heard. people need people. as your colleague, my friend told me, you know, once you re out of rehab, your tolerance is down. you use again and that could be it. that s right. i have to leave it here for you. coming up next, cory monteith in his own words. you ll hear how the actor described his addiction. we ll talk to the man who asked monteith about his very own demons, george strombolopolous
bottom of the hour. i m brooke baldwin. for the next 30 minutes, we are talking heroin. we will be speaking with two former aar eer heroin addicts. we ll talk to doctors, police about the drug, the addiction and the recovery. small town girl, living in a lonely world, she took the midnight train going anywhere he played the singing high school football star fin hudson in the hit tv show glee. but on saturday cory monteith s voice was silenced. he was found dead in a vancouver hotel room. behind the smile, the 31-year-old actor was battling demons. a drug and alcohol addiction he spoke publicly about. for me, it wasn t so much about, you know, the substances, per se.