A Dose of Reality

by Neil Strauss (Rolling Stone - April, 1994)

Kurt Cobain recovers from a drug-and-alcohol induced coma.

The patient is walking,” said Kurt Cobain’s doctor Osvaldo Galetta after Nirvana’s frontman awoke from a coma on March 5. “He came close to death, and we are glad that he recovered so quickly.”

Cobain had been touring Europe for 24 days. He was exhausted and plagued by throat problems when he took a little vacation time after a concert in Munich, Germany, on March 1, cancelling a second show in Munich and one in Offenbach, Germany. He checked into Rome’s five-star Excelsior Hotel the following day - where he met up with his wife, Courtney Love, and his 18-month old daughter, Frances Bean - and was carried out unconscious at 6:30 the morning after. According to Nirvana’s management, Gold Mountain, Cobain, 27, was battling the flu and chronic stomach problems when he mixed a prescription medication with alcohol. “He wanted to celebrate seeing Courtney after so long,” Gold Mountain explained. A spokesman for the band’s record company, Geffen, stresses that the mixing “was definately not a suicide attempt - it was strictly accidental.”

The medicine was Rohypnol, and the drink was champagne, according to Italian media reports (Geffen and Gold Mountain have not contradicted this). Rohypnol is an addictive, Valiumlike drug manufactured in Italy under the name Roipnol and is unavailable in the United States. According to pharmacists, Rohypnol is not used for stomach problems or to combat influenza, but to treat insomnia or anxiety.

A dose of Rohypnol is anywhere from one-half to two milligrams. The drug can be ingested in larger doses, up to four one-milligram tablets, when used to treat drug or alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Gold Mountain denies that withdrawal is an issue in Cobain’s case. It is not known how many pills Cobain swallowed or how much champagne he drank. “Kurt’s a lightweight,” a friend says in reference to the singer’s low tolerance for alcohol. “He’s very volatile and always sick.” Doctors are reported to have also found a small amount of an Italian sedative similar to chloral hydrate and very reactive to alcohol in Cobain’s stomach.

What matters is that Cobain is alive - despite premature radio reports to the contrary. After Love called for help, Cobain spent five hours in Rome’s Umberto I hospital getting his stomach pumped and undergoing other emergency treatment before he was allowed to transfer to the intensive care unit of American Hospital, a private clinic just outside the city. Late on the night of March 4 and early the next morning, Cobain drifted in and out of consciousness. That afternoon, he came out of the coma for good. Though new-wire services reported that Cobain’s first request was a strawberry milkshake, a well-wisher who was there says that his first entreaty was actually for doctors to “get these fucking tubes out of my nose.”Galetta says the singer will suffer no permanent damage. According to Nirvana’s booker, it’s still too early to determine whether Cobain will be well enough to participate in this summer’s Lollapalooza tour, on which Nirvana is tentatively scheduled to perform