By Staff WriterOriginal Source: soberinfo.comOn October 2, 2017, America lost a musical legend with the sudden and unexpected death of rocker Tom Petty. This week, some answers emerged, as the autopsy report on the star’s death was released to the public for the first time.Tom Petty died of an accidental overdose. He had a mix of drugs in his system which included oxycodone and fentanyl. He had been prescribed the painkillers due to a series of ailments and injuries — most notably, a fractured hip that progressed into a full break as Petty refused to cancel his tour, playing through the pain night after night.In fact, the day Petty died was the day he was diagnosed with a broken hip, shortly after completing a three-show run in Vegas to close out the tour commemorating the 40th anniversary of his musical career.Petty’s death from an accidental overdose looks all the more tragic in light of his past addictions; when his biography was published in 2015, America learned that Petty spent much of the 1990s battling a heroin habit; he’d kept it secret for so long because he didn’t want his story to influence younger musicians negatively. Fentanyl, one of the drugs in Petty’s system, is a synthetic opiate that is much stronger than heroin. It’s prescribed most often to alleviate severe chronic pain. Those close to Petty say that the pain he experienced as the tour closed had become “unbearable” as he battled through injuries to complete the tour.To their credit, Petty’s family addressed the overdose head-on, releasing a statement expressing hope that “this report can save lives,” particularly by making people aware that “many people who overdose begin with a legitimate injury,” not understanding “the potency…of these medications.”