When the funny, outgoing and vivacious Charlotte Dawson took her own life on February 22, it shocked the country.
In an exclusive, extensive report in this month’s Australian Women’s Weekly, details surrounding her death have come to light, including Charlotte’s alleged use of a controversial medication.
"Charlotte had a warm heart, she wasn't at all stuck up," her sister Vicky told the magazine, "and yet people bullied her relentlessly about how she looked and the fact that she was getting older, and how she wasn't a real celebrity. It was cruel."
It was partly this inability to deal with criticism that is thought to have led to her alcoholism and fuelled her long battle with depression. She overdosed on sleeping pills in late 2012 after Twitter trolls got the better of her but recovered to speak out about her ongoing struggle.
But behind her public facade, Charlotte Dawson was hiding plenty of demons, including ongoing heartbreak over the failure of her marriage to former swimmer Scott Miller, an abortion, a social media addiction and alcoholism.
The Weekly reports that Charlotte, in an attempt to stop drinking for good, had begun taking a controversial drug, Baclofen, which is prescribed to combat the symptoms of multiple sclerosis, but has also been used as a "cure" for alcoholism.
The magazine writes that Charlotte purchased a box online and sent images of the packet to her friends, claiming it would be her answer to her struggle with drinking. But Baclofen has been linked to at least one other high-profile death in Britain - the death of BBC press officer, Anna Sargent, whose body was found on the banks of the Thames after she started taking the drug to rid her of alcoholism.
