Russell Armstrong Asked for Xanax Before Death 
 
 begged a friend for anxiety drugs days before his death ... TMZ has learned.Armstrong's longtime friend and confidante-- who appeared on "" last season -- tells us, he met Armstrong for dinner recently ... and things had reached a new low.According to McCullough, Armstrong couldn't afford to pay for his meal -- and when the subject turned to his divorce, Armstrong said, "This is as bad as it gets."Armstrong also said he was distraught over his negative portrayal on the show ... and feared he'd never recover from the ordeal -- so McCullough gave him a Xanax pill to take the edge off.We're told Armstrong called McCullough 3 days before his death, asking for a "full bottle" of Xanax -- but McCullough suspected something was seriously wrong ... and refused out of fear Armstrong might abuse the pills.As we previously reported, Armstrong's death was ruled a suicide by hanging -- no drugs or alcohol were found at the scene. ||||| By Radar Staff 
 
 Russell Armstrong broke down just days before he committed suicide and admitted to a friend that reality TV had destroyed his life. 
 
 In an exclusive interview with RadarOnline.com Tom Vickers reveals how in his final days Russell was ‘somber’ and ‘withdrawn’ and blamed Real Housewives for turning his life upside down. 
 
 “It’s terrible news,” said the photographer, who forged a friendship with Russell over recent months and last spoke to him on August 4. “But during our phone call he didn’t sound like the Russell that I knew. 
 
 PHOTOS: Russell Armstrong and Taylor Armstrong In Happier Times 
 
 “He was down in the dumps over the latest allegations that he had abused Taylor. I told him people don’t believe everything they read and he told me; ‘It’s funny how a reality show can ruin your entire life.'” 
 
 At the time of his death he was facing divorce drama with Taylor who accused him of physically abusing her. 
 
 PHOTOS: Celebs Who Died Young 
 
 But while he vehemently denied laying a finger on her, Vickers said he didn’t feel up to telling his side of the story. 
 
 “He told me the allegations were absolutely not true and that he wanted people to hear that from him. But he admitted he was too emotional and that there was too much to handle. 
 
 PHOTOS: Celebrities Who Died In Bizarre Circumstances 
 
 “He said: ‘I hope when I’m ready to speak people will be kind to me.’ 
 
 “I don’t know what has happened with him in the past, but I do know that he seemed like a really good man. He was always cheerful and he had a real Southern charm about him. 
 
 PHOTOS: The Real Houswives Of Beverly Hills In Hawaii 
 
 “It’s a really sad time and I’m sure there will be a lot of people who will miss him.” 
 
 Russell was found hanged in a house in Beverly Hills on Monday night. 
 
 RELATED STORIES: 
 
 Russell And Taylor Armstrong’s Marriage Counselor Reacts To Suicide 
 
 Russell Armstrong’s Ex-Wife Says ‘Taylor Drove Him’ To Suicide 
 
 ‘Real Housewives’ Taylor Armstrong ‘Hysterical’ After Estranged Husband’s Suicide 
 
 ‘Real Housewives’ Russell Armstrong Commits Suicide ||||| Unscripted 
 
 Two weeks before the season-two premiere of 'Beverly Hills,’ Taylor Armstrong’s estranged husband, Russell, is dead in a suicide. Kate Aurthur and Maria Elena Fernandez on the couple’s money woes and on-camera unraveling—and Bravo’s plans for the show. 
 
 Update: On Wednesday afternoon, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Coroner's office confirmed the police department's early findings that Armstrong hanged himself. Toxicology results are pending, the spokesman said. 
 
 
 
 The women of Bravo’s phenomenally successful Real Housewives reality TV franchise have experienced—on camera—divorce, problems with their children, foreclosure, and bankruptcy. Off camera there have been three deaths as well: the fiancé of Gretchen Rossi and the ex-husband of Tammy Knickerbocker, both of Orange County, died of natural causes; and the ex-fiancé of Atlanta’s Kandi Burruss was beaten to death in a fight at a club. 
 
 And now there has been an apparent suicide. Russell Armstrong, the 47-year-old husband of Taylor Armstrong, 40, of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, was found dead Monday night, two weeks before the premiere of the show’s second season. He had been staying in West Los Angeles on Mulholland Drive with a friend, who discovered Armstrong hanged in his bedroom, according to a detective from the Los Angeles Police Department who spoke with The Daily Beast. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene, a police spokesman said. A representative from the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said Armstrong’s death does appear to be a suicide but that an autopsy will be conducted within two days. The news was first reported by TMZ. 
 
 During the first season of Beverly Hills, Russell was portrayed as a grumpy-at-best partner, leaving parties in a sulk, buying his daughter a dog she was allergic to without seeming to care, and coming across as cold and uncomfortable. Taylor often talked about the sadness in her marriage to other cast members. “My marriage is the worst it’s ever been,” she told the cameras. “I just feel that something has to change.” The season ended with the couple trying to work out their problems. “We definitely agreed that we wanted to keep our family together,” Taylor said during a reunion of the cast, filmed in early January. The couple had been married for six years and had a 5-year-old daughter, Kennedy. 
 
 But the reconciliation did not last. Taylor filed for divorce on July 15, citing irreconcilable differences. In an interview with People magazine around the same time, she said that her husband had physically abused her. Russell told People: “Did I push her? Yes, maybe things happened in the heat of the moment, but it was during a time in our lives that was not characteristic of who we were. This show has literally pushed us to the limit.” (The divorce petition filed in downtown Los Angeles Superior Court, viewed by The Daily Beast on Tuesday, makes no mention of abuse or domestic violence.) 
 
 Season two of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills—part of a franchise that has expanded since the 2006 launch of Orange County to New York City, Atlanta, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Miami—is scheduled to premiere on Sept. 5. Asked whether the show will air as planned, how much the dissolution of the Armstrong marriage will be featured during the season, and whether the show will be changed or reedited in the wake of Russell’s death, a network spokesperson said no decisions have been made. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the channel’s executives plan to wait “at least 24 hours to make a decision about whether they’ll postpone the show.” 
 
 Russell does not appear in the premiere, which has already been sent out to the press. “He was not happy about how he thought the show would portray him,” Russell Armstrong’s attorney, Ronald Richards, reached on Tuesday, told The Daily Beast. But the couple’s marital problems are front and center, plot-wise. In her first scene, Taylor goes shopping for lingerie with friends in order to “spice up my love life” with Russell. She says they are in couple's therapy. 
 
 The therapy comes up again later in the episode under more fraught circumstances. At a dinner party with the whole cast and their spouses—except for Russell—Taylor feels that Ken Todd, the husband of Lisa Vanderpump, is judging her for needing professional help to save her marriage. She breaks down in tears and leaves the table. 
 
 When she returns, the confrontation continues. “We were at the end of our rope,” she tells Todd. “I’m really fragile right now. I’m going through so much—it’s a lot.” 
 
 In confessional interviews to the camera, fan favorites Ken and Lisa do not appear to be sympathetic to Taylor. Ken says, “It seems to me that Taylor can turn on the waterworks whenever she wants to.” 
 
 “Taylor’s very manipulative,” Lisa says. She later adds, “Her mood goes up and down like the whore’s drawers.” 
 
 In a trailer for the upcoming season, Taylor appears to be crying several times, at one point tearfully saying to cast mate Adrienne Maloof, “I feel like I’m breaking.” Adrienne responds: “You are. You’re having a nervous breakdown.” 
 
 Reality television has faced dilemmas over whether to air tragedies before. In 1994, MTV’s third season of The Real World cast the HIV-positive Pedro Zamora, and his death that same year was memorialized in a special tribute program. At the opposite end of the spectrum, when in 2009 Ryan Jenkins, a contestant on VH1’s dating show Megan Wants a Millionaire, murdered his wife and then committed suicide rather than be arrested, the network pulled the show off the air and scrapped it. 
 
 Thom Beers, executive producer of several testosterone-fueled documentary-style programs that follow men whose livelihoods force them to confront death on a regular basis, has dealt with the passing of three cast members. The sudden death, on camera, of Capt. Phil Harris of Discovery’s Deadliest Catch in 2010 garnered the most attention. Harris, who appeared to be recovering from a stroke he suffered while filming, asked for production to continue, allowing the cameras to capture his unexpected death. The series earned an Emmy nomination. 
 
 “What happened on Housewives is a tragedy,” Beers said Tuesday. “It casts a pall over the whole production because the shows start airing, and there’s nothing you can do … It really affects the spirit of the entire production.” 
 
 According to Richards, the venture capitalist was suffering from financial difficulties made worse by lavish spending he and his wife felt was required by the show. Richards was representing him in the divorce and in a $1.5 million lawsuit filed against the couple last month, alleging they had bilked people in an Internet medical scam. “People start making financial decisions based upon what’s best for the TV show instead of what’s best for them,” Richards told The Daily Beast. “So it creates a horrible cycle of bad decisions that start to pile upon one another.” 
 
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 A Bravo spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on this assertion. 
 
 Richards talked to his client regularly and said that when he spoke to Russell two days ago he seemed depressed about his divorce and the pending lawsuit, but not at a level that worried Richards. 
 
 “He had the normal depression that you would expect based on being in a lawsuit and a divorce, but nothing beyond the ordinary,” he said. “I was not concerned. This is very tough on all levels.” 
 
 Armstrong is survived by his daughter with Taylor and two sons from previous relationships. Through her manager, Robert Thorne, Taylor Armstrong said in a statement that she is “devastated by the tragic events that have unfolded. She requests privacy at this time so that she may comfort her young daughter. Her thoughts and prayers are also with Russell’s 11- and 13-year-old sons.” 
 
 In January, Russell Armstrong talked to The Daily Beast for a story about the husbands of Real Housewives. “I didn’t really understand what we were getting into,” he said at the time. “I don’t really watch reality television.” ||||| By Amber Goodhand – Radar Reporter 
 
 Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Russell Armstrong had secrets about his sexual preference that were about to be revealed, and RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned that some were already discovered by his estranged wife, Taylor Armstrong. 
 
 According to sources close to the 47-year-old, he was bisexual and worried that a tell-all book was going to out him, along with Taylor. 
 
 PHOTOS: Russell Armstrong and Taylor Armstrong In Happier Times 
 
 “About six months ago Taylor confided in a close friend that she’d found history for a gay website called Adam4Adam.com on Russell’s laptop,” the insider told RadarOnline.com. 
 
 “He was also spending a lot of time at the gym, but his body wasn’t changing, which she claims led her to believe he was meeting with men he’d met off the website and not spending time working out as he claimed.” 
 
 The insider also tells RadarOnline.com that when Russell was approached for comment about the impending tell-all book, it included great detail about what he liked in the bedroom. 
 
 PHOTOS: Celebrities Who Died In Bizarre Circumstances 
 
 “Not only was it going to come out that Russell was bisexual, but there were people on the record that were going to talk about the kind of sex he liked,” the source said. “He was into S&M type stuff; choking, rough-housing and slapping.” 
 
 Ronald Richards, Russell Armstrong’s attorney tells RadarOnline.com “As Russell Armstrong’s attorney engaged for these type of claims, I’m unaware of the existence of any book, and unaware of any information about any adultery. I believe any claim would be false.” 
 
 The businessman had a history of violence in his past, including allegations of abuse by Taylor and restraining orders filed against him by his ex-wife and an ex-girlfriend. 
 
 PHOTOS: The Real Houswives Of Beverly Hills In Hawaii 
 
 As RadarOnline.com previously reported, Russell’s ex-wife attributes his suicide to his relationship with Taylor and the pressures of being on the hit Bravo TV show, along with immense financial hardship. 
 
 Russell was found hanged in the bedroom of a friend’s home on Monday night and pronounced dead at 8:16 p.m. by the Los Angeles City Fire Department. 
 
 The new season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is set to premiere on Bravo on September 5. It’s not known how Bravo will deal with the tragedy. 
 
 RELATED STORIES: 
 
 Russell Armstrong Was ‘Concerned And Scared’ For Tell-All Book 
 
 Russell Armstrong Told Pal Just Before Suicide: ‘Reality TV Ruined My Life’ 
 
 Russell Armstrong’s Ex-Wife Says ‘Taylor Drove Him’ To Suicide
– Just days before his death, Russell Armstrong begged a friend for anxiety drugs, telling him, "This is as bad as it gets." Armstrong was upset over his divorce and his portrayal on Real Housewives, and couldn't even afford to pay for the meal he was sharing with the friend, Russ McCullough. McCullough gave him one Xanax, but Armstrong wanted an entire bottle, TMZ reports. The gossip site adds that Armstrong's death, not surprisingly, was officially ruled a suicide by hanging. Meanwhile, his family is considering suing Bravo. The network that airs Real Housewives "is at fault and somebody needs to pay," Armstrong's stepbrother tells Radar. But one member of his family is also offering a glimpse into Armstrong's dark past, Perez Hilton notes: His sister says that, at the tender age of six, he accidentally shot her. She adds that he "had anger issues" but was trying to overcome them. He also allegedly punched a business associate, had two restraining orders filed against him by ex-partners, and pleaded guilty to battery in 1997, Radar reports. Click to read Bravo exec Andy Cohen's response to the Armstrong news.