By now, anyone who’s heard of DJ AM’s death has also heard of the drugs police reportedly found alongside his lifeless body: a bag of crack on his bed, and an assortment of undigested OxyContin pills inside his stomach and throat.

AM’s death adds to the grim parade of celebrities who have passed away this summer (recently nicknamed the Summer of Death), and the long line of famous people who flamed out too soon after developing addictions to mind-altering substances.

Drug-taking, of course, is not a uniquely celebrity pursuit: the desire to get f*ed up is probably as old as self-awareness. Archeological evidence suggests people have been chewing coca leaves for 2,000 years, while the Greeks worshipped wine in the form of Dionysus. Yet celebrities seem especially predisposed to doing drugs, for reasons probably best left to their therapists. While some manage to maintain their addictions into old age, others pass out in bathrooms and outside nightclubs and never wake up. Here are four famous addictions that eventually got the best of their celebrity sufferers:

OxyContin & DJ AM – It’s unclear when DJ AM (born Adam Goldstein) first started taking OxyContin, but he was prescribed pills for pain and stress after his 2008 plane crash with Travis Barker. OxyContin is a time-release formula of Oxycodone, a powerfully painkiller derived from thebaine, a constituent of opium. It’s usually prescribed to treat severe pain, but at some point people discovered that crushing the pills into a powder and snorting or injecting them delivers a heroin-like rush.

The media have dubbed OxyContin “hillbilly heroin”, because of stories that say the drug was first widely abused in Appalachia. However, journalist Joshua Lyon, writing in his recent book Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict, objects to the term: for one thing, OxyContin is insanely expensive compared to heroin. An 80mg pill of OxyContin goes for about $80, according to Lyon, while a bag of heroin costs $10-$20. Unfortunately, just because the drug is expensive doesn’t mean it’s safe: OxyContin was also one of the substances that caused Heath Ledger’s death. Like Ledger, DJ AM was indulging in “polypharmacy”. OxyContin may not kill you on its own, but combining it with other drugs can produce unpredictable, and lethal, effects.

Propofol & Michael Jackson – Preliminary toxicology reports have found that Michael Jackson died at least in part because of propofol, an anesthetic the singer was apparently using as a sleep aid (one expert likens that to going through chemo because you’re sick of shaving your head). Also known as Diprivan, propofol is usually used in an IV drip to keep patients asleep during surgeries. It’s frequently employed in plastic surgery, which may have been where MJ first discovered it. Aside from putting people to sleep without side effects like nausea or grogginess, propofol can also cause mild euphoria and sexual fantasies.

Jackson’s doctor has said he was trying to wean the singer off the drug, which Jackson called his “milk”, but had admitted that on the night of his death he gave the singer 25 milligrams. That’s a relatively small dose, half Jackson’s usual amount, but apparently acted in concert with other sedatives in the singer’s body to stop his breathing. The New York Times has reported that propofol abuse is on the rise, especially among doctors and nurses who have easy access to the drug.

Heroin & Janis Joplin – Heroin may be the musician poison of choice: Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Dee Dee Ramone, and Sid Vicious all died of heroin overdoses, to name a few. Joplin loved her drinks and her drugs, though she struggled several times to kick dope, always unsuccessfully. According to one biography, she overdosed five times during her life, not counting the last.

One October day in 1970, after a long session at the studio, Joplin picked up some heroin and prepared to shoot up in her LA hotel room. Unbeknownst to her, the heroin was unusually pure – it hadn’t been checked by her usual connection. Hours later, she was discovered dead in her hotel room, still clutching change from the vending machine where she’d bought cigarettes. She was 27.

Creepily, Joplin’s death only helped the popularity of the drug that killed her, with LA dealers going around over the next few days saying they could sell you the same heroin “so strong it OD’ed Janis”. In fact, eight other people apparently died from the same batch that weekend.

Absinthe & Toulouse-Lautrec: An unusually strong, green-colored spirit, absinthe is associated with the decadence and dark imaginings of 19^th century French bohemia, from the poet Charles Baudelaire to the painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Developed as a health-giving tonic, the drink was later banned in much of Europe and the US out of a belief it produced hallucinations and insanity.

A disabled aristocrat who painted some of the best known portraits of fin de siècle Parisian circuses, bars, and brothels, Toulouse-Lautrec was one of absinthe’s most ardent devotees, even sipping from an absinthe cane of his own design. He is said to have introduced Van Gogh to absinthe, which the troubled Dutch painter was drinking the night before he cut off his ear and sent it to a prostitute. After years of abusing absinthe, Toulouse-Lautrec died of complications alcoholism, as well as syphilis, in 1901.

Van Gogh died from shooting himself in the chest, in 1890.  After he was buried, a friend planted a thuja tree over his grave. Whether the friend knew it or not, thuja has been identified as the definitive source of thujone, the chemical long thought responsible for absinthe’s deleterious effects. When Vah Gogh was exhumed several years later, the roots of the tree had grown around his coffin, as if clutching it in an embrace.

Photo by ephotography