Michael Jackson and his pill problem- more is revealed

Not shocking- it turns out that Michael Jackson's pill problem was more serious than we all thought. As I talked about in a previous blog post, Jackson had some major problems dealing with a childhood filled with trauma, the fame he was dealt, and all of his familial and personal issues which eventually lead to his too-early demise. Now CNN is reporting that Jackson, in 2004, was taking more than 10 Xanax a night. He also had his security guards picking up prescriptions in their own names for him, as well as prescriptions from doctors as far away as New York.

The amount of Xanax that Jackson alleged took surprised CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta.In addiction cases, people develop a tolerance to drugs and have to take more and more pills, Gupta said. "No matter how you cut it, this is an extremely high dosage of Xanax," Gupta said. "It is a huge red flag, even with the tolerance that I was talking about. This dosage is exceedingly high for any human being."

According to the website AboveTheInfluence.com, who cite a number of reliable resources and studies, said this: Taking prescription drugs without a prescription, not taking them as directed, or mixing them with alcohol are all unsafe and potentially deadly. A 2008 study based on 224,355 U.S. death certificates for which people died from medication errors showed that there was a 3,196 percent increase between 1983 and 2004 in deaths at home from combining prescription drugs with alcohol and/or street drugs.

In 2006, Jackson was trying to jumpstart his career with a series of concerts in Las Vegas. According to Jack Wishna, a promoter who was helping Jackson secure the series of concerts in Vegas, Jackson had to pull out of the concerts due to his weakened condition. According to Wishna, Jackson appeared emaciated and incoherent, and often had to use a wheelchair to get around.

According to other sources, around this time Janet Jackson was planning an intervention for Michael. According to the report, Janet recruited her brothers to help stage the intervention, however Michael told his bodyguards to prevent his family from entering his property and refused to accept phone calls from his mother Katherine, CNN reports.

This becomes a difficult situation- what happens when someone has procured so much power that they seem to be untouchable? Why didn't the security guards step in? They must have known there was a problem- the guards couldn't have thought his pill consumption was normal, especially since they were filling prescriptions in their own names for him. Were they blinded by loyalty to Jackson? Or money? It's hard to believe that no one ever stepped in- people had to know something was wrong. Perhaps with a family intervention and treatment, Jackson would've had a chance to get better. The world will never know.


Here's Sanjay Gupta from CNN talking about Jackson's death:



And here's Dr. Gupta talking about Michael Jackson's final rehearsal:



Here's a breakdown of recent statistics on pill abuse:



Here's something funny.

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Michael Jackson's Tragic End

On June 25th, we lost one of the marvels of the entertainment world, a truly talented and tortured artist, Michael Jackson. With his meteoric rise to fame as the centerpiece of the Jackson 5 and then an amazing solo career, in total selling over 750 million records worldwide. However, this fame came at an amazing price.

Having been in the spotlight since the age of 5 or 6, Jackson seemed to struggle with his place in the world. Naming his home the "Neverland Ranch" lead us to believe he wanted to be a child who never grew up (which, of course, led to the infamous sleepovers on the Ranch and the molestation accusations). A documented addiction to painkillers, two failed marriages, and numerous lawsuits for pedophilia dominated Jackson's last 20 years, causing him to become a late-night joke mainstay and most of us to forget his talent.

The question remains- do we remember him for the art he produced? Has there ever been a more polarizing, successful individual? His death caused delays and nearly shut down numerous websites. He had become the centerpiece of a media storm- mostly negative in the last 20 years.

In 1993, Jackson abruptly canceled the remainder of his "Dangerous" tour after admitting on an audiotape that pain from a burn injury while filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984 as well as allegations of sexual abuse have caused him to become addicted to painkillers. As of yesterday, June 29th, various news and entertainment outlets were reporting that Jackson had received a Demerol injection the morning of his death- but we'll only find out for sure after the autopsy is published. Lisa Marie Presley, Jackson's wife for a few short years, posted a blog entry on her Myspace page talking about his drug use. She talks about how she and Jackson had conversations about how he would end up with the same fate as Elvis- and it's looking more and more like he did.

Either way, we've lost the most tortured and talented artist we've seen in a long time. There will never be another like him, good or bad. Here are some of the telling articles from a series of Vanity Fair interviews. It will be interesting to see what unfolds from the autopsy results- but it seems as though we've lost another soul to the disease of addiction. Would it have been possible for Jackson to get help? Had anyone offered treatment? Had he BEEN to treatment? Was there support for him to get well, or just to prop him up and keep him out in the public eye? We may never know, but these are questions we can answer as we move forward to help other artists in the future. He was not a commodity- he was a person. And it's hard to remember that sometimes.

Here's a tribute to Michael Jackson:





In health news, here's a great video by Lance Armstrong's organization, Livestrong:



Here's something funny.

As always, connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on Twitter. Become a fan of the blog on Facebook. See you this week.