5 Celebs Who Were Deeply Drunk When They Died
The best part about being a celebrity is the constant opportunities to party. The worst part about being a celebrity is when all that partying inevitably kills you.
Still, the partying was fun. So, let’s not moralize too hard over each of the following deaths. Instead, let’s just respectfully say, “They died as they lived — with elevated blood alcohol levels.”
Tim Horton
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Tim Hortons is such a famous restaurant chain that many people know just the restaurant, not the man behind it. If asked, they’d guess he’s simply the founder, like a Trader Joe or a Papa John. They don’t remember Tim Horton the hockey player, who played in the NHL from 1946 all the way to 1974. They already knew that “Tim Hortons” is a Canadian icon because there are a lot of those restaurants up there, but the man was also a Canadian icon, which is a bit like learning that there was a real Ronald McDonald, and he was America’s 12th president.
Horton died on February 21, 1974. A police cruiser saw him speeding south (or going “Niagara-bound,” as Canadians call it) and tried to chase after him. But he escaped the cop car’s pursuit — that’s how fast he was going. Then he swerved, flipping his car right over so it landed on its roof. He wore no seatbelt, so the crash killed him.
Three decades went by before the autopsy became public. Even at the time, people speculated that he might have been drunk, but police refused to say. It turned out he’d been drunk all right, and he’d been at twice the legal limit.
The medical examiner also noted that Horton’s jaw, long rumored to have been injured by a flying hockey puck, had never been fractured. Sports isn’t so dangerous after all (at least, it’s not as dangerous as driving at 110 miles per hour).
Thomas Kinkade
It was said that one out of every twenty American homes had a painting by Thomas Kinkade. It was said by the Thomas Kinkade company itself, so you should view that stat with some skepticism, but the company definitely did sell millions of paintings, particularly when you include the ones sold on mugs.
As for the man himself, friends knew him more for his drinking than his painting. That was why, when his family announced he’d died of natural causes in April 2012, it made sense that he had died of acute intoxication, because for him, that counted as natural causes. When a statement announced that he’d died in his sleep, with the woman he loved, that was technically true. That woman was a different woman from his wife, but that was no secret.
People fondly remembered his many drunken escapades. For example, there was the time when he stayed at the Disneyland Hotel and peed on a Winnie the Pooh statue, in order to mark his territory. “This one’s for you, Walt,” he said, mid-stream. Another time, at a Siegfried and Roy show, he drunkenly yelled the word “codpiece!” until other audience members moved away from him. Fortunately, his mother was beside him during that show and managed to calm him down.
Ervin McKinness
We likely wouldn’t know of rapper Ervin McKinness but for the events leading up to his death. These events were a series of Twitter posts, which remain up to this day.
“Driving, tweeting, sipping the cup,” he first wrote. “Fuck, yolo, I’m turning it up.” Then came the above message, bragging of driving at 120 miles per hour while drunk.
Like many rap boasts, his weren’t entirely true. Though he was in a car, he was not the one driving, and posting while drunk is perfectly legal, so long as you’re not behind the wheel. The car then ran a red light and crashed into a family’s backyard, killing all five passengers. Unfortunately, the part where he said you only live once did turn out to be entirely true.
Bon Scott
As you can see, when you get into a car drunk, you might die even if you aren’t the one behind the wheel. You might die even if the car remains stationary.
Bon Scott was the lead vocalist of AC/DC in 1980. After a night of clubbing, he got into a friend’s parked car and went to sleep there, which is the comparatively responsible move. He died that night, of alcohol poisoning. Some choking-on-vomit may have also been involved, a situation that’s officially referred to as “death by misadventure.” When authorities phoned his mother to inform him of the death, she first assumed it was Scott calling her, to wish her happy birthday.
Just days before dying, Scott was working on the AC/DC song “Have a Drink on Me”:
Oliver Reed
Oliver Reed’s drinking career spanned decades. One time, he threw up on Steve McQueen. Another time he was arrested for a bar fight in Vermont. Then there was the time he spoke while drenched in whiskey on Johnny Carson — though, he was actually sober at the time, and Shelly Winters just dumped whiskey on him for railing against feminism.
His drinking culminated in May 1999. He was in Malta, in the middle of shooting Gladiator, and he stepped into a pub for the night. The pub was also filled with British sailors from the HMS Cumberland, and Reed challenged them to a drinking contest. Outdrinking an entire crew of sailors is mathematically impossible, but Reed gave it his best, drinking until he keeled over and died right there in the pub.
Earlier, he had promised director Ridley Scott that he would give up drinking for the duration of the shoot. He didn’t quite live up to that promise, and while Reed’s family mourned the loss of a man, Scott mourned the loss of an actor, whom he now had to replace in remaining scenes using CGI. This looked just fine to audiences in 2000.
We were all blind in 2000. This was due to the drinking, mostly.
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