By Emma Mayer
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Bravo's Below Deck star, Captain Lee Rosbach, has spoken out again about his son's death in July 2019, saying that he no longer considers it an accidental overdose.
Several years ago, the superyacht captain's 42-year-old son, Joshua Lee Rosbach, died of a drug overdose. Rosbach has been vocal since then about the effects of the opioid crisis in America, and on Tuesday, Rosbach sat down with the Heart of the Matter host Elizabeth Vargas to talk about his son's addiction.
He has previously said that his son battled addiction for 20 years, and prior to his death, had been clean for about six months.
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"We thought we'd turned a corner," Rosbach said. "I have since changed my outlook on it. Instead of calling it an accidental overdose, I changed that term to an accidental poisoning, because I hate to say it, but Josh was experienced. He knew how much he could tolerate, how much he could take and still function the next day."
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"What he didn't know, that what he was buying and what it contained wasn't exactly what he thought it was," Rosbach added. "[It] contained fentanyl, so he didn't die from an accidental overdose. He knew the amount that he was taking. He died from an accidental poisoning."
Fentanyl, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram, is "the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered. From large cities to rural America, no community is safe from the presence of fentanyl."
According to the DEA, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is more potent than heroin and morphine. Additionally, the DEA states that a small amount of fentanyl, equivalent to 10 to 15 grains of table salt, could be deadly.
There has been a rise also in the discovery of rainbow fentanyl, which many believe is being used by drug cartels to target young children.
Rosbach said that the family knew Josh had been using drugs for years. "I can't count the rehab programs. I can't count the times I'd gotten up in the middle of the night to go get him, and to bring him home, or to take him to the hospital, or just get him out of a bad situation. He did six months in county lockup for a probation violation, which, and this is probably going to sound terrible to some people, but it was kind of a relief," he said.
When asked on Tuesday if any of the Bravo crew or cast of the reality series Below Deck knew about the struggles Rosbach's family was going through, Rosbach said they "went through it alone."
"As a dad, you're supposed to be able to fix things. That's why you're there, until you realize one day, that you run into something that you can't. That's the hardest pill to swallow," he said.
Newsweek reached out to a representative for Captain Lee Rosbach for additional comment.
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