At a Planet Hollywood launch in Indianapolis last July, Chris Farley was hamming it up for the audience by dousing himself with a bottle of milk like an Indy 500 race winner on a calcium bender. He was sweating tremendously, was massively overweight, and was acting utterly out of it.

At least one of Farley’s friends did not find the clumsy show entertaining.  “Hey, you gotta take it easy,” he urged, pulling the actor away. Farley flashed one of his trademark naughty-boy grins and then uttered the ultimate Hollywood cliché, “I want to live fast and die young.”

Chris Farley got his wish on December 18.

According to some sources, a check of his flat turned up several prescription drugs but no illicit narcotics.

However, according to some sources, the flat was also filled with bags of a suspicious-looking white substance and alcohol bottles that were both empty and partially full.

Chris’ corpse was transferred to the county medical examiner right after after all efforts to rescue him failed. There, he had an autopsy, and tissue samples were submitted to the laboratories for toxicological testing.

His death was classified as accidental after the lab test findings were made public. “Farley died of opiate (morphine) and cocaine intoxication and his death was determined to be an accident.”  Other substances found in his system, such as marijuana, morphine, and fluoxetine hydrochloride, were determined not to have contributed to his demise.

He was seen drinking in the days before to his death at the Crobar, Karma, the Cheesecake Factory, Berghoff Cafe, and Hunt Club, where he performed a Wolfman Jack imitation and allowed strippers to cover his body. With his brother John, he had made his way to the Hunt Club. “Hey, pretty lady, can you get me and my partner a Jack and Coke?” he remarked to the waitress.

Later, the waitress said, “He looked really bad.”

He allegedly hired an exotic dancer called Autumn $300 to visit his apartment on a Tuesday and do a lap dance for him. They were surrounded by his footballs, baseballs, movie posters, his corny clown artwork, and a valued image of him with Paul McCartney from an SNL joke, along with his other sports memorabilia. He lit a cigarette. He drank OJ and vodka. The female danced. He looked confused and shaky.

When his admirers laughed, Farley never appeared to be able to tell whether they were laughing with him or at him. Farley would self-deprecatingly shrug that his attraction was purely restricted to “Fat Guy Falls Down” routine even as the comedian’s charmingly diabolical, over-the-top physical antics drove up his asking price to $6 million per film.

After returning from Farley’s burial in his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, a close friend said that his worry and self-hatred were his “death sentence.” Of course, he also had an enormous appetite for food, alcohol, and drugs.

Stranger yet, Farley seemed equally hooked to his attempts to straighten up his life.

The late comedian spent around 17 times in and out of rehab over the course of his last two years in an effort to kick his fatal habit and restart his life. But none of them appeared to work.

Close acquaintances of the actor stated that in addition to his alcoholism and propensity for overeating, he also sometimes struggled with anxiety and self-hate. They think that his bad habits had a part in his passing.

In December 2011, Farley arrived home, looking more out of control than ever. The days that followed were filled with partying, getting ready for Christmas, and going to mass at St. Michael’s Catholic church.

Farley even went to an AA meeting, albeit he did so nervously.

Unfortunately, Farley’s positive attitude was only the quiet before the storm. Seely and other friends who saw Farley in his last days said that the actor’s downward spiral started on December 14. He maniacally hopped from bar to bar in Chicago while abusing copious amounts of drugs and drink and making friends with a number of party females.

Farley tried everything, including fat farms, strict alcohol abstinence plans, and drug purges, but no 12-step program was successful for very long. Farley visited Hazelden one more a week before to his death. He was so well-known at the Minneapolis detox facility that welcomed celebrities, a buddy laments, “they should’ve named a wing after him.”

Two days later, John Farley discovered him unclothed in the apartment entrance, stretched out.

The exact cause of death wouldn’t be known for many weeks; in the meantime, it seemed that any number of things may have caused it, including drug or alcohol usage, abrupt heart failure, choking, or a stroke.

The authorities discovered a foil package containing a white substance beneath his body and a few vials carrying anti-depressants, which prompted the media to speculate about his issues with cocaine and heroin. Nobody was able to make a definitive statement, but considering Farley’s background, one Chicago writer said that “[His] may have been the least-surprising premature death of a celebrity in show-business history.”

Then all of the people who had known him spoke. It was a manifestation of love. He was referred to as a “great guy” and a “sweetheart.” A “force of nature.” An actor who was going to “open up and show us what he could accomplish”.

His producer for his first two films and boss at Saturday Night Live, Lorne Michaels, said of him,  “When he was being funny, it made everything else that happened fade into the background. It was what made him special. And people loved him. I loved him.”

Almost everyone did really adore Farley; it wasn’t a Hollywood affair. Of course, given his loudness, his farting, his sporadic sexism against women, and his regular stumbles in his attempts to control his cravings for food, alcohol, and drugs, he could be a real pain in the ass. But when it came to Farley, you just had to put that stuff aside and jump on board, even if it never hurt to urge him to slow down, get clean, stop doing drugs, and lose weight. Over time, a lot of people really did it. But Farley seldom paid attention for more than a few seconds at a time. Then, as being Farley was primarily what he was in the business of doing, he had to go back to it.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office announced the findings of the post-mortem examination, which established that Farley had accidentally overdosed on cocaine and morphine. Another contributing reason was the constriction of the arteries that supplied blood to the chubby comedian’s heart.