My journey ends here...
According to biographer Donald Spoto, Marilyn's addiction to sedatives dated from the beginning of 1954, era where she suffered from sleep disorders.
Near 1950, at the beginning of her career, she probably had recourse to drugs to face stage fright and anxiety which overwhelmed her during shootings.
Since 1950, the reporter Sidney Skolsky, her friend and confidant, supplied her with sedatives and other drugs, because his office was located in the Schwab's Drugstore.
At this time, the use of barbiturates, speeds and narcotics was an ordinary thing in Hollywood. It was an exciting and risky activity, which its long-range effects weren't well known. The massive taking of drugs has destroyed the career of many stars likeErrol Flynn, Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift.
When the spiral was engaged, she took more and more drugs to block the effecs of the previous drugs and so on.
At the end of 1954, she left Hollywood and its dangers to New York City, where she devoted a year of working on herself and of experiments about drama. Instead all of that, she needed sedatives and barbiturates to sleep. She swallowed the drugs with champagne, hoping that it would allow her to have a good night.
Eight years after, on the shooting of "Something's Got to Give" she still took Valium with champagne, to overcome the stage fright.
Instead all the warnings about the drugs abuse
dangers, she was incapable of reducing her consumption, except for
short periods, because her insomnia crisis always came back. Her
gynecologist
At the end of the 50's, she was within an infernal spiral : she took sedatives to sleep, then drugs to awaken in the morning, then others during the day to fight against anxiety. She didn't accept any appointment before noon because she needed the whole morning to dispel the kind of hangover generated by Nembutal.
Her addiction to barbiturates and sedatives still increased during the shooting of
When the doses weren't strong enough, she persuaded her doctors to give her injections in quantities close to the ones used for an anaesthesia.
In the morning, she was in a such a torpor condition that her makeup man, Allan "Whitey" Snyder, began to put make-up on her while she was in bed.
He noticed that she was completely dependant, but claimed thta her intoxication "didn't look like a usual intoxication".
During the last month of her life, Dr Hyman Engelberg gave her daily injections of "youth serum" which changed her mood and gave her some energy.
On August 3, 1962, she was in possession of 2 prescriptions (one from Dr Engelberg the other one from Dr Seigel) of Nembutal she bought at the San Vicente Pharmacy (12025 San Vicente Boulevard).
The blood analysis showed 4.5mg of Nembutal and 8mg of Choral Hydrate, with a Nembutal liver concentration of 13mg.
The disparity between those numbers has allowed many speculations about Marilyn's death; in particular, the question has been to know if the lethal dose has been given with an enema or by an injection.
The list of the drugs which were in the bedroom has also been suspected, and some analysts has suggested that only the half of the drugs founded appeared on the list of the forensic scientist in his chemical report
(Librium, Nembutal, Chloral Hydrate, Phenergan, and others unlabelled).
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