The actor Carrie Fisher had cocaine, morphine and ecstasy in her system when she died, her autopsy has revealed, but investigators are still unclear whether the drugs contributed to her death.

The report, released on Monday, suggested that Fisher, 60, may have taken cocaine three days before she became unwell on board a plane on 23 December last year. Last week the coroner ruled that Fisher had died from sleep apnoea – a condition in which air cannot get into the lungs properly during sleep or when you are unconscious – as well as other undefined factors.

The initial report had mentioned that drugs had been found in her system, but a more in-depth toxicology report on Monday established that there were traces of heroin, morphine and MDMA, a purified form of ecstasy. The samples were taken from Fisher when she arrived at a Los Angeles hospital.

Fisher, best known as Princess Leia in Star Wars, suffered a heart attack on the plane, followed by vomiting, and the report specified that she had a “history of sleep apnoea”.

“Based on the available toxicological information, we cannot establish the significance of the multiple substances that were detected in Ms Fisher’s blood and tissue, with regard to the cause of death,” the report states.

Fisher’s battle with substance abuse was well known, and she often said her life had been defined by addiction. She spoke publicly about starting to use cannabis from the age of 13, and said she took cocaine on set during filming of Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back.

“I didn’t even like coke that much. It was just a case of getting on whatever train I needed to take to get high,” she said in 2010.

Fisher went through several stints of rehab and electroconvulsive therapy to help with her addiction and long battle with mental illness, and she took numerous medications to help with her bipolar disorder. However, she was always adamant that her unstable Hollywood upbringing – her father Eddie Fisher left her mother for Elizabeth Taylor when she was a child – was not to blame for her issues with drugs.

“It’s always been my responsibility,’ she said. “If it was Hollywood to blame, then we’d all be dope addicts.”

The coroner found Fisher also had a buildup of fatty tissue in her arteries, a common cause of cardiac arrest.

Fisher’s brother, Todd Fisher, said last week he was not surprised by the results. He added that his family did not want a coroner’s investigation of his sister’s death. “We’re not enlightened. There’s nothing about this that is enlightening,” he said. “I would tell you, from my perspective, that there’s certainly no news that Carrie did drugs.”



Her mother, Debbie Reynolds, died just one day after her.

