Kurt Cobain lived for twenty seven years, some of which were blighted by excruciating stomach pains that sometimes drove him to consider suicide. But He survived. He managed to get treatment for that problem. He survived.
Within hours of
Courtney Love and
Michael DeWitt joining Kurt in Rome, hours in which Kurt argued with Courtney, and finally decided to leave her, Kurt was fighting for his life in a hospital in Rome.
Courtney's response to this was to tell Select magazine: "If he thinks he can get away from me that easily, he can forget it. I'll follow him through hell."
She said this not within the context of a failed suicide, but within the context of an argument in which he told her he was leaving her. It is reminiscent of a recorded threat by Courtney to Victoria Clarke" I will haunt you to fucking hell, for the rest of your life."
Tom Grant believes that this overdose was an attempt by Courtney to murder Kurt. The overdose was due to his ingesting
Rohypnol
and champagne, which Grant believed Courtney administered to Kurt without his knowledge.
Wallace and Halperin mention this in their book and then ask why Courtney would have called the ambulance whilst Kurt was unconscious, rather than leaving him to die?
In an
interview with Robert Hilburn on
April 4th 1994, Courtney talked about the overdose in Rome. Hillburn reported:
Love had flown to Rome early last month to spend a few days with Cobain after he cancelled part of a European concert tour, caused by illness. She woke in the hotel room to find him unconscious, having taken some of her prescription tranquilizers and alcohol, she says; " He was dead......legally dead, he was in a coma for 20 hours...on life support. They thought he was never going to come out of it." (L.A. Times April 10th 1994).
Maybe Courtney did leave him until she thought he was dead. Her above statement looks to me like amazed disbelief that he was not dead. Maybe the answer is that obvious.
Reports came through that Cobain had been moved from the Umberto Prima Hospital - allegedly at Courtney Love's insistence - to the American Hospital. Many thought that, in the state he was in, Cobain would not be moved anywhere unless doctors at the Umberto had said they could do nothing more for him. A doctor at the Umberto Prima said: "Cobain was in a grave condition when he left here." (Melody Maker's March 12th 1994 edition).
How wise was it to have Kurt transferred at this point? Could this have been a desperate attempt to set-back/prevent his recovery? I know it was supposed to be for security reasons, but I question this excuse.
On
March 3rd, just a few hours before she met Kurt in Rome, Courtney did an interview with Select magazine, the writer said that during this interview Love was popping Rohypnol:
There is a box of Rohypnol on the big mahogany table in the middle of Courtney Love's London hotel room, among the scattered papers and cigarette boxes. "Look, I know this is a controlled substance," she smiles as she empties one of those fizzy stomach upset powders into a tumbler of water and washes back a Rohypnol. "I got it from my doctor. It's like Valium. You know, fuck that Prozac stuff. I'm not a depressive, I tried it for like five or six days, and by the sixth day I started seeing tracers like when you're on acid..." (Select's May 1994 edition).