Doug Thorburn, addiction expert, addiction contrarian and author of the recently released Alcoholism: Myths and Realities: Removing the Stigma of Society's Most Destructive Disease, has released his July 2009 Thorburn Addiction Report (TAR) with Michael Jackson as Top Story of the Month, Runner Up to Top Story Ed McMahon and a host of other news items.

Thorburn has some fascinating thoughts on the twisted end to Michael Jackson's life as more facts come to light about the multiple doctors who gave him narcotics as well as the parasitic sycophants who got their own prescriptions and gave him the drugs. According to the autopsy report Jackson's hips were covered with needle marks, his hair was mostly gone and he weighed a paltry 112 pounds with a stomach full of pills at the time of his demise. This was a sad end indeed.



Here is the article from Doug Thorburn on Michael Jackson:

In Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse, I wrote:  "The higher an addict's social status, the greater the enabling, because the enablers have more to lose….Enabling is the reason so many talented people—Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Burton and John Belushi—die young; they are 'helped' to their graves by those around them." Close people can't tell the addict he needs to stop drinking and using if they are to protect their jobs, incomes and, in many cases, positions of status, prestige and power. Underlings can too easily be fired.

Let's not confuse this with blaming enablers for addiction, a genetic disorder that results in biochemically processing a drug in such a way as to cause the afflicted person to sometimes act badly. It's not their fault. However, disenabling provides the most certain path to recovery. Until every enabler stops protecting the addict from consequences of misbehaviors, the odds of permanent sobriety are greatly reduced. Michael Jackson, with his extraordinary talent and income-producing abilities, had everything going against him in ever attempting to lead a sober life: few would do anything to risk their prestige or money they could make as a result of catering to him or selling his talents.

Still, not all use was hidden. According to insiders, Jackson referred to white wine as "Jesus juice" and red wine as "Jesus blood." Close persons had long been aware that he usually drank wine out of soda cans in an effort to hide the consumption. Jurors in his child abuse trial heard flight attendant Cynthia Bell explain, "Mr. Jackson is a very private drinker." On a flight in 2003 she served him wine in a Diet Coke can. Almost anyone who hides his booze is already a late-stage alcoholic. His handlers knew of various admissions into and "graduations" from rehab for addiction to pain killers, including Demerol and morphine. It's interesting to note that any heroin addict will, in a pinch, substitute these drugs, as well as Oxycontin and Vicodin. The reverse is also true.

Jackson reportedly got so inebriated on airplanes while gulping "soda" that a former business adviser asked Jackson's security detail how wine could throw so big a punch. It was simple: he combined pills with the booze. I explained in Drunks, Drugs & Debits that different drugs in combination potentiate each other, becoming far more powerful than simply a double-dose of one drug. Since Jackson reportedly has owed as much as $62,000 to a Beverly Hills pharmacy we could reasonably conclude that Jackson combined enormous quantities of such drugs.

Jackson may have undergone as many as 50 facial reconstructions. He once spent $70,000 on surveillance equipment so he could spy on his own staff (his entire house was wired). Handlers claim that he sometimes acted like a 12-year old and could be extraordinarily vindictive, destroying the reputations and lives of others when given the chance. Recovering addicts with ten or fifteen years' sobriety report they were capable of any behavior while using, including doing bizarre things to their bodies, spying on others, acting like children and committing acts of revenge even against those for whom they feigned love.

Jackson's life was filled with the drama we see so often in the lives of addicts. According to one biographer, there was almost never a time when he was free of crisis or chaos. His cash-flow situation was, for years, reportedly dire. The former wife of private investigator Anthony Pelicano, Kat, remembers him at her house in August 1993 appearing very high, nodding out and drinking glass after glass of "orange soda." He checked himself into detox a few months later, which was followed by a number of additional attempts at rehab. It's not that he wasn't forced into rehab; it's that the enablers were always there for him after he got out. He settled the early molestation case for a reportedly very high price, only to go through it all again in the mid-2000s. Money bought him freedom, but at the ultimate price.

Sadly, as is true of most addicts, there were likely hundreds of incidents for which handlers, family, friends and law enforcers could have acted to stem the inevitable progression into obvious late-stage addiction. To think that the Michael Jackson of twenty years ago could have turned into what he died as boggles the mind. Psychotropic drug addiction respects no boundaries either in terms of who is afflicted or the resulting behaviors. All that is necessary is the right genes, access to the drug and, to greatly increase the odds for a continuation of active addiction, an inability or unwillingness on the part of those who could intervene to do so.

Jackson, with his wealth and ability to produce income, didn't stand a chance. As so many great alcoholism authorities have said, wealth is the biggest enabler. Michael Jackson's life, which can't be understood without comprehending the fundamental idea of substance addiction as described in Drunks, Drugs & Debits, is a testament to this truism.

Runners-up for top story of the month, Ed McMahon:

Longtime "Tonight Show" sidekick Ed McMahon, dead at age 86. McMahon, whose life was partially chronicled in these pages in July 2008 edition of TAR, sued his insurer and won $7.2 million in a settlement over mold that allegedly killed his dog Muffin in the early 2000s. That's one way to get your money back after blowing through a reported $200 million net worth. More recently, he sued Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, two doctors and the owner of the home where he fell and broke his neck some 30 months ago.

Like other addicts, he likely triggered alcoholism at an early age and was, therefore, a practicing alcoholic while he served as a fighter pilot instructor for four years in the Marine Corps, a pilot of spotter planes during the Korean War, Philadelphia's "Mr. Television" while serving as host for 13 programs, the spokesman for at least 37 banks around the country in the early 1980s, the spokesman for American Family Publishers' family sweepstakes for a couple of decades, the pitchman for hundreds of other products and services including Budweiser beer and Alpo dog food, and Johnny Carson's comedy foil as "Big Ed" for three decades. Except for the mishandling of money, he was apparently a highly functional alcoholic, having missed only three tapings of "The Tonight Show" in 30 years. "Ed is the announcer of the show," Carson once told his viewers, "only because he never passed the bar. In fact, Ed has never passed any bar."

While fans loved Big Ed, those who were on the receiving end of his financial travails likely did not. While appearing on "Larry King Live" with his third wife, Pamela Hurn, he blamed two divorces, bad money management and bad investments for his woes. "I made a lot of money, but you can spend a lot of money." He forgot to mention what made him spend that money, engage in poor money management and go through two divorces: alcoholism.

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