Dolores O’Riordan, the 46-year-old lead singer of Irish rock band the Cranberries, died of Fentanyl poisoning in an apparent suicide, the Santa Monica Observer is reporting .
Citing an anonymous source within the London Police Department, the Southern California newspaper claims that counterfeit Fentanyl was found near the singer’s bed. Further, the source claims that O’Riordan deliberately overdosed in an attempt to commit suicide.
However, a police spokesperson told NBC News that, “Her death is not being treated as suspicious.”
At this point, it bears noting that anonymous sources are not always the most reliable source of information. Further, as of this writing, Dolores’ cause of death has not been officially released. That won’t happen until after toxicology reports have been completed.
O’Riordan had been known to battle mental health issues and addiction for decades. According to People , she had been sexually abused over a period of several years as a child and often suffered “flashbacks” to her abuse.
“It gets hard as well when you have daughters because you get flashbacks when you’re with them and when you are watching them.”
Later in her life, her mental illness issues began to surface in view of the public.
In November 2014, O’Riordan caused a stir when she acted strangely on an Aer Lingus flight, assaulting members of the flight crew and shouting that she was “the Queen of Limerick!” She would later say that she was suffering from psychotic episodes following the end of her 20-year-marriage. By 2017, she had come out publicly as suffering from bipolar disorder.
“Dolores O’Riordan always looked so small behind those big guitars, but with fragility there was fierceness, one of our own, the joy of an outsider owning it for herself, and for all of us” https://t.co/wsWK8eKrVl
— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 16, 2018
Fentanyl is an opioid painkiller that is generally used as an anesthetic. Like other opioids, it is powerfully addictive. Unlike other opioids, however, it is lethal in even the tiniest doses. According to a 2016 Stat News report, Fentanyl is up to 50 times more potent than heroin. Whereas a fatal dose of heroin, for an adult male, is in the range of 30 milligrams, a mere three milligrams of Fentanyl can be fatal to an adult man.
As of this writing, it is not clear when toxicology reports will be completed and Dolores O’Riordan’s official cause of death will be revealed.