Computer expert kills himself on nternet with prescription drugs

“I TOLD u I was hardcore.” These were the last coherent words Brandon Vedas, 21, typed into the computer in his Phoenix bedroom as he showed off for internet pals watching on a web cam

Condolences have been pouring into a website set up in tribute to Vedas, who died online.

The computer expert from Arizona, USA, killed himself with a lethal dose of prescription drugs in January while chatting to online buddies.

While many onlookers egged him on to take more pills, some did try to help, begging to call 911, to get his mother from the next room. After he passed out, some tried frantically to figure out his location while others argued against getting involved.

But Internet Relay Chat is anonymous, and no one in the drug users’ chat group knew the last name of the young man who called himself Ripper.

Vedas was a casualty of a new epidemic: a surge in the recreational use of pharmaceuticals, even as the rate of illegal drug use holds steady or declines.

The most recent survey by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration says 11.1 million people used prescription drugs for fun in 2000, nearly half of whom were under 25.

By his own account, bragging in the hour before he died, Vedas ingested large doses of klonopin, methadone, restoril and inderal, along with marijuana and 151-proof rum.

On the night of January 12, Vedas urged chat pals to log onto his web site and watch him go through his stash. “Bottoms up, fellas!” he crowed.

“Don’t OD on us, Ripper,” said one of the onlookers watching Vedas swallow pill after pill.

“That’s not much,” said a teenager from rural Oklahoma who calls himself Smoke2K. “Eat more. I wanna see if you survive or if you just black out.”

His mother found him at 1pm the next day on his bed.

His computer had shut down and locked itself.