Reason for demise for Adam Wealthy, former “Eight is Sufficient” youngster star, dominated as fentanyl

The consequences of fentanyl are thought-about the reason for demise for Adam Wealthy, the kid actor often called “America’s little brother” for his function on the hit household dramedy “Eight is Sufficient.”

The previous tv star’s demise this January has been dominated an accident by the Los Angeles County Medical-Examiner Coroner’s workplace, in keeping with an post-mortem report. Wealthy died in his Los Angeles house at age 54.

His stardom got here at simply eight years outdated because the mop-topped son raised by a widower newspaper columnist, performed by Dick Van Patten, in ABC’s “Eight is Sufficient.” He went on to seem in different reveals, together with “Code Crimson” and “Dungeons & Dragons” within the Nineteen Eighties. He additionally appeared in single episodes of well-liked reveals like “Baywatch” and “The Love Boat,” and reprised his “Eight is Sufficient” function in two TV film reunions. 

Wealthy had a number of run-ins with police associated to drug and alcohol use. He was arrested in April 1991 for attempting to interrupt right into a pharmacy and once more that October for allegedly stealing a drug-filled syringe at a hospital whereas receiving remedy for a dislocated shoulder. A DUI arrest got here in 2002 after he struck a parked California Freeway Patrol cruiser in a closed freeway lane.

Wealthy had publicly mentioned his experiences with despair and substance abuse within the months earlier than he died. He tweeted in October that he had been sober for seven years after arrests, many rehab stints and a number of other overdoses. He urged his followers to by no means quit. 

When Wealthy died in January, his publicist, Danny Deraney, mentioned that he had suffered from a kind of despair that resisted remedy. He had tried to erase the stigma of speaking about psychological sickness, Deraney mentioned, and sought experimental cures to deal with his despair. 

“He was only a very variety, beneficiant, loving soul,” Deraney mentioned in an announcement. “Being a well-known actor is just not essentially what he needed to be. … He had no ego, not an oz of it.”