Michael Jackson (1958-2009)
Michael Jackson, the legend: singer, songwriter, record producer, dancer, and actor. His reputation spanned four decades, and his talents have inspired people on a global level, earning him the honor of being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame not once, but twice. So where did it all go wrong for him? How did such a global personality arrive at such a tragic end?
Abuse for Michael began early in his childhood at the hands and words of his father. Attacked with demeaning words, he was wounded inside, and ultimately became unsure of himself, leading him to withdraw as a youth, and even surgically change his appearance later in his adult life. Michael continued, even in extreme popularity, to express odd behavior, doped up on prescription medication, occasionally revealing his inner demons, leaving many people to wonder: "What is really going on in Neverland?" Some concerned parents asked the same question on behalf of their children, and received a sizable amount of money for their curiosity.
Suffering psychologically, and battling with past traumatic experiences, the famous singer resorted to a cocktail of prescription drugs such as propofol, as well as alprazolam, sertalin, omeprazole, hydrocodone, paroxetine, carisoprodol, and hydromorphone. We can't even pronounce many of these, but they all sound pretty scary. According to reports, some of these drugs had labels made out to Jackson under pseudonyms (Omar Arnold, Bill Bray), and some were unlabeled, revealing the hidden, nameless life of the struggling star.
Yet, what killed Michael Jackson was not the drugs, according to the final verdict. The culprit was none other than his drug pushing personal physician, who, like other physicians that treat celebrities, know how to keep their customers happy and coming back for more. For Michael, he was receiving propofol to help him sleep. Propofol, is also known as "milk of amnesia", for its opaque, milk-like appearance and the play on words with the popular laxative "milk of magnesia", only this milk can knock the crap out of you in a seriously different way. This powerful anesthetic is normally administered to induce and maintain anesthesia (kept out of the reach of children . . . of course) and is well known to cause cardiac arrest (the cause of Michael's death.) The negligent act of injecting propofol at home without benefit of life-saving equipment at the ready, by no less than his very own medical doctor ended Jackson's career and his life.
Michael's death was truly a tragic event brought on by a greedy personal physician preying on the psychological weakness of an addicted human being, one who was haunted by an abusive past which neither drugs nor the fantasy world of Neverland could help him forget or escape. Michael Jackson was driven to addiction in order to appease those dark demons fighting within him, leading him to cry out in desperation, "Got milk?"