Disturbing Details Discovered In Robin Williams' Autopsy Report - YouTube

Robin Williams was one of the most beloved  comedians of all time. He entertained generations  

of audiences on stage and in the movies through  a body of award-winning work that span more  

than four decades, and his big personality was  dwarfed only by the size of his generous heart.  

So it was as shocking as it was heartbreaking when  Williams was found dead by suicide on August 11,  

2014, in his home in Tiburon, California.

"We are thinking of, we're thinking of  

Robin's family. We're thinking about everybody  he touched around the world throughout his life."

He had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease  before his passing, but his autopsy showed that  

was just part of the story - and part of a life  story that began in Chicago on July 21, 1951.

By the late 1970s, Williams's over-the-top  stand-up comedy routine caught the eye of  

"Happy Days" producer Garry Marshall.  Marshall was impressed with the young  

comic and in 1978 he cast Williams to  play a goofy alien from the planet Ork,  

known as Mork, on "Happy Days." Mork proved so  popular that ABC spun the character off onto  

his own show that very same year. Running  from September 1978 through May of 1981,  

"Mork and Mindy" catapulted Williams  into household name notoriety.

While his career was taking off, however, the  pressure was proving too great for Williams.  

According to the website The Recovery Village,  

Williams began using cocaine and alcohol  to help manage his overnight success.

There are also various rumors and stories  when it comes to Williams' drug abuse.  

In fact, It's widely known that the actor was  partying with fellow comedian John Belushi  

the night the "Saturday Night Live" actor  died from an overdose of cocaine and heroin.

The death of his friend, coupled  with the birth of his son,  

convinced Williams to start dealing with his  addictions. Over the next several decades,  

Williams reportedly managed his addictions  to varying degrees of success. In 2003,  

while on set in Alaska filming the movie "The  Big White," addiction reared its ugly head once  

again in Williams' life. The comedian talked about  the experience with The Guardian in 2010, saying,

"I was in a small town where  it's not the edge of the world,  

but you can see it from there, and then I thought:  

drinking. I just thought, hey, maybe drinking  will help. Because I felt alone and afraid."

According to The Hollywood Reporter,  after an ultimatum from his son,  

Williams checked himself into an addiction  treatment center in August of 2006.  

To the general public, things seemed to be better.

But on August 11, 2014, Rebecca Spencer,  Williams' long-time personal assistant,  

found the actor dead in his bedroom. The  effects from a recent diagnosis of Parkinson's,  

a disease that attacks the central nervous system  causing tremors, stiffness, and slurred speech,  

were beginning to settle in, though he  reportedly had doubts about the diagnosis.

According to Vanity Fair, the disease was  affecting his memory the most, causing him to have  

difficulty remembering his lines. And while the  consensus for William's suicide initially seemed  

to point toward depression, Susan Williams, Robin  Williams' widow, insisted there was more to it.

When the coroner division of the Marin County  Sheriff's Office released Robin Williams'  

autopsy report two months after he died,  it revealed conditions that his family and  

close friends already knew about and at least  one that they didn't, according to ABC News.  

The comedian had a hard-to-diagnose  condition called Lewy body dementia  

and it could have played a part  in his decision to end his life.

According to the Alzheimer's Association,  

Lewy body dementia, also known as LBD,  is a progressive dementia that leads to:

"[A] decline in thinking,  

reasoning and independent function of abnormal  microscopic deposits that damage brain cells."

It's often hard to diagnose whether symptoms  are caused by LBD or Parkinson's disease.  

And since he had depression, it wasn't unusual  that the toxicology report found antidepressants  

in his system, along with caffeine and  the Parkinson's drug levodopa. And,  

although Williams had a history of alcohol and  drug abuse, the autopsy found none in his system.

In addition to LBD, Williams' autopsy report  also found changes in his brain that are  

characteristic of both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's  disease. According to The Hollywood Reporter,  

these changes impacted his behavior  in the days leading up to his death,  

but his wife Susan had revealed that the  comedian seemed fine the night before his  

death. Williams' death came as a shock to not  just his family, but his friends and millions  

of fans around the world who grieved  the loss of the beloved entertainer.

If you or anyone you know  is having suicidal thoughts,  

please call the National Suicide Prevention  Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).