Don Grady, of My Three Son’s
Three years ago yesterday the world lost someone many of us women fell in love with as kids. He was someone I was suppose to go to my college prom with in the early 70’s, a wonderful young man that most people only saw on television as Robbie, the oldest son in the TV series My Three Sons.
While living in Southern California I became close friends with Don’s agents, an older couple, who decided to play matchmakers and set us up for the prom. As it ended up it never happened because he had to cancel at the last minute due to an unexpected opportunity for a gig in France. After being elected the “Most Bashful” in my senior year in high school, I was so relieved something had come up for Don because honestly had he actually shown up at my door I would have fainted dead away! 🙂 🙂
But Don was a super nice guy, very much the type of person he played in the role of Robbie on My Three Son’s. You likely would have remembered him better in this picture:
Cast of My Three Sons
On June 28, 2012, Don died from cancer in a town I grew to love like my home, Thousand Oaks, CA.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/arts/television/don-grady-robbie-on-my-three-sons-dies-at-68.html
So why am I telling you about Don on the third anniversary of his death? It is because I have people ask me all the time how many people I know who have died on antidepressants or killed someone on antidepressants or committed suicide on antidepressants. So I have decided to answer that question here.
Just two weeks ago I sent out the testimony of a friend of mine who is a pharmacist who attempted suicide on Prozac and then her husband, also a pharmacist and also on Prozac, walked into their TV room and shot himself in front of Maria and their four children while they were watching TV. Maria made the statement that the day would come that every family in America would be affected by these deadly drugs that she refused to call “medications.”
So, as I think through all those I know, I am going to list just a few. Right after I sent out Maria’s story I sent you my friend Le Anne Westover, Del Shannon’s widow’s tragic story of her husband’s suicide. Then Tucker Moneymaker’s story of his wife killing their two sons and shooting herself, and I have many more to send to you as well because my list is VERY, VERY LONG.
Now did Don Grady die on an antidepressant? No. But his family was affected too as he did lose his sister to these drugs about a decade before his own death. That was his sister Lani O’Grady who died of an overdose of Prozac and the pain killer Vicodin. If her name sounds familiar it is because she starred for years as the older sister in the hit TV series Eight is Enough. I only wish I had known sooner that this was going on in Don’s sister’s life so as to have been a help to them in learning the truth behind what was causing this nightmare in their lives so we could have prevented her death.
Lani O’Grady
The documentation of Lani’s death on high doses of Prozac and Vicodin can be found in our database of cases at www.ssristories.NET at the following link:
ssristories.net/archive/showdd43.html?item=2675
From other articles we learn more of the antidepressant hell Lani and her family lived through including her sudden and unexpected death at such a young age: “In the years after the show O’Grady bounced in and out of rehab. She was clean at her death, says her mother, taking only an antidepressant and an antiseizure medication (an earlier antidepressant had left her with recurring seizures).”
And this article in People Magazine quotes her mother about the struggle she had with addiction to various prescription medications yet how happy she was before her death and looking forward to the future: http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20135461,00.html
October 15, 2001 Vol. 56 No. 16 Family Tragedy
In the Years After Eight Is Enough, Actress Lani O’Grady Struggled to Overcome the Damage Done by Addiction
Hobbled by addictions in the years since she was a member of one of TV’s happiest families, Eight Is Enough’s Lani O’Grady was ready for some real-world domestic bliss. On Sept. 24 she baked muffins in her Valencia, Calif., trailer home and told her mother she was thinking of getting a puppy. “She said, ‘Oh, I love my little home,’ ” says Mary Grady, a children’s talent agent. “It was the most serene tone I’d heard in her in years.”
Everyone needs to stop and think just how many they know personally who have lost their lives to these drugs because I think everyone would be shocked to come to the realization of how very high the toll has been. As I have said my list is much too long to ever get through as you will find many of them in our database of cases posted here: www.ssristories.NETÂ I urge you not to allow these victims of antidepressants to remain just numbers! Go through these stories and learn about them to see how much the world has lost by these drugs robbing us all of them and their talents they did not get to stay long enough to share with us. Remember this list is only the tip of this iceberg. Hopefully this will help you to see what Maria Malakoff meant when she said every family in this country would be affected personally by these deadly drugs. If you saw my personal list you would understand why I refer to this as a holocaust.
So to my friend Don today I would say, “Please rest in peace, we miss you, and let Lani know that her battle for truth about her death will continue to be fought until the world knows what cut her life and the lives of Del Shannon, Maria’s husband, Gary, Tucker’s sons, David and William,and oh so many others far too short!”
Ann Blake Tracy, Executive Director,
International Coalition for Drug Awareness
drugawareness.org & ssristories.NET
Author: ”Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? – Our Serotonin Nightmare – The Complete Truth of the Full Impact of Antidepressants Upon Us & Our World” & Withdrawal CD “Help! I Can’t Get Off My Antidepressant!”
WITHDRAWAL WARNING: In sharing this information about adverse reactions to antidepressants I always recommend that you also give reference to my CD on safe withdrawal, Help! I Can’t Get Off My Antidepressant!, so that we do not have more people dropping off these drugs too quickly – a move which I have warned from the beginning can be even more dangerous than staying on the drugs!
WITHDRAWAL HELP: You can find the hour and a half long CD on safe and effective withdrawal helps here: http://store.drugawareness.org/ And if you need additional consultations with Ann Blake-Tracy, you can book one at www.drugawareness.org or sign up for one of the memberships for the International Coalition for Drug Awareness which includes free consultations as one of the benefits of that particular membership plan. You can even get a whole month of access to the withdrawal CD with tips on rebuilding after the meds, PLUS all seven of my DVDs, PLUS hundreds of radio interviews, lectures, TV interviews I have done over the years PLUS my book on antidepressants with more information than you will find anywhere else for only $30 membership for a month (that is only $5 more than the book alone would cost) at www.drugawareness.org. (Definitely the best option to save outrageous postage charges for those out of the country!)