Draft:Death of Eileen Mihich

Eileen Rose Mihich was born on March 19, 1993, in the Antelope Valley, in California. She and her family then moved to Bakersfield, California, where she spent most of her childhood. She was an only child and was alleged by her aunt to have been the victim of physical, verbal, and sexual abuse from her parents as a child.

As a result of the trauma she experienced in her childhood, she developed borderline personality disorder, suicidal ideation, bipolar disorder, PTSD, anxiety, and depression in adulthood. After unsuccessfully attempting voluntary stopping eating and drinking (VSED), she impersonated a California physician using a publicly available National Provider Identifier (NPI) number and claimed to be suffering from terminal cervical cancer to receive an unfilled prescription form via email from a Washington state compounding pharmacy. She then used the completed prescription form to obtain a mixture of digoxin, morphine, and amitriptyline, a common drug mixture used in physician-assisted suicide.

Eileen’s body was found on March 8, 2025, at the Hotel deLuxe in Portland, Oregon, with empty prescription bottles at her bedside as well as a “Step-by-Step Instructions for Taking Aid in Dying Medications” pamphlet from the non-profit Washington End-of-Life Options.

The toxicology report that followed revealed she had high levels of digoxin, morphine, and amitriptyline in her body at the time of her death. An autopsy confirmed she was did not have cervical cancer or any terminal illness.^[1]

Eileen's story was first made public in December of 2025 through a YouTube video from the non-profit Aging with Dignity to highlight how “Death with Dignity” laws can be accessed by those who do not meet the statutory requirements.^[2]

The story was later featured in an in-depth article by Elizabeth Bruenig in The Atlantic,^[3] and received more reporting from the National Review^[4] and The Hill.^[5]