LITTLE ROCK — I didn’t know Mindy McCready, country music star.
I knew Mindy McCready, Celebrity Rehab star. Make that participant. None of the semi-famous (former basketball player Dennis Rodman) and infamous (former American madam Heidi Fleiss) who sign up to appear on VH1’s addiction show directed by Dr. Drew Pinsky are exactly shining and sparkling at that tormented time in their lives.
The Florida-born McCready, 37, was found dead last Sunday from an apparent self-inflicted single gunshot wound at her Heber Springs home, according to the Cleburne County sheriff’s office. This just weeks after her boyfriend, David Wilson (and father to one of her sons, Zayne, born in 2012; the other is Zander, born in 2006), died on the same porch in a shooting death that remains under investigation.
It’s the most painful possible end to a future that looked more promising just three years ago.
McCready, then addicted to oxycodone and alcohol, appeared on Celebrity Rehab’s third season, which premiered in January 2010. Cast among outrageous characters like Rodman and Fleiss, she at first appeared to be one of the more stable of the bunch.
Until the shaking started.
During a lighthearted conversation with roommate actress Mackenzie Phillips, McCready began twitching and quivering, even falling to the floor. What the audience and Phillips first thought was a joke turned out to be a scary seizure, and she was rushed to the hospital. Tests revealed brain damage that she attributed to an abusive relationship.
At season’s end, she declared herself clean from drugs and ready to return to her son Zander. But by May 2010 she was hospitalized in Florida for an overdose of prescription medication. And by November 2011, she left Florida - fleeing with Zander, who was in her mother’s custody - for Arkansas. A judge ordered her son’s return.
She’s not the only Celebrity Rehab alumna to struggle. And she’s not the only casualty - she is the fifth participant to die too young under troubled circumstances in the last two years.
Taxi actor Jeff Conaway, 60, died in 2011 of multiple causes, including coronary artery disease and pneumonia. Prior to his extended hospital stay, he had drugs, including opiates, in his system.
Alice in Chains’ bass player Mike Star, 44, died of a prescription drug overdose in 2011.
Rodney King, 47, died of an accidental drowning, with alcohol, cocaine and marijuana found inhis system, in 2012.
Reality star Joey Kovar, 29, who appeared on MTV’s The Real World: Hollywood, died of opiate intoxication in 2012.
Pinsky, who reached out to McCready after the death of her boyfriend, addressed her death in a statement posted to the VH1 blog: “Although she was fearful of stigma and ridicule she agreed with me that she needed to make her health and safety a priority.
Unfortunately, it seems that Mindy did not sustain her treatment.”
He offered this advice to others so that other tragedies might be avoided: “Mental health issues can be life threatening and need to be treated with the same intensity and resources as any other dangerous potentially life threatening medical condition.
“Treatment is effective. If someone you know is suffering please be sure he or she gets help and maintains treatment.” E-mail: [email protected] Spin Cycle is a weekly smirk at pop culture and a weekly segment on Little Rock’s KURB-FM, B98.5 at 7 a.m.Thursdays. Listen live and hear podcasts at b98.com.
Style, Pages 49 on 02/24/2013