Philip Seymour Hoffman ominously predicted his own demise from a heroin overdose less than two months before it occurred, according to a new report.
The acting great, who was found with a reported 65 bags of heroin, 20 hypodermic needles and assorted prescription drugs, was in the throes of addiction.
Hoffman, sensing the wheels of his own self-destruction were turning, had been going to AA meetings on and off while in the middle of a six-week heroin binge.
At one of those meetings, he told a peer, “If I don’t stop I know I’m gonna die.”
During last month’s Sundance Film Festival in Utah, Hoffman also admitted his addiction to a magazine publisher over the course of a nondescript chat.
Washington Life publisher John Arundel didn’t recognize the hat-wearing actor and asked him what he did for a living, at which point Hoffman said:
“I’m a heroin addict.’’
After Arundel recognized the star, Hoffman clarified that he’d just finished rehab. “He wanted people to know he was in recovery mode,’’ Arundel said.
His issues were more than evident long before police found Philip Seymour Hoffman dead of a suspected overdose Sunday at the age of 46.
Mimi O’Donnell, Hoffman’s girlfriend of 15 years and the mother of his three children, had given the actor a dose of “tough love” in his final months.
O’Donnell kicked him out of their $4.4 million New York home on Jane Street due to his spiraling battle with heroin addiction, insiders told the New York Post.
O’Donnell “told him he needed some time away from the kids and to get straight again,” a source said, citing sources close to the actor’s family.
The de facto eviction notice from O’Donnell led to the talented Academy Award winner to rent a Greenwich Village apartment, where he was found dead Sunday.
An insider told the newspaper that O’Donnell, who last spoke with her longtime love on Saturday, remained “distraught” over Hoffman’s passing.
High Watch Recovery Center CEO Janina Kean said that because Hoffman had gotten sober, he may have overestimated the amount of heroin he needed to get his fix.
“The brain begins to reset itself and is no longer able to withstand the same potency … an amount that was once tolerable could easily cause an overdose,” she said.
Kean said the gifted actor “may have misjudged how much would have stopped his respiratory center,” a common instance in accidental drug deaths.
The fact that it Hoffman’s death was drug-related led Jared Padelecki to say it isn’t a tragedy, which he later explained in slightly less controversial terms.
What it is, without a doubt, is another sad case of immense loss at the hands of substance abuse. It’s a lot to think about. Our thoughts are with PSH’s family.