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 penned a fascinating article in the wake of Michael Jackson?s death. Thorburn, who writes the Thorburn Addiction Report, has some fascinating thoughts as it becomes more obvious that parasitic sycophants contributed to the downfall and death of the singer.



Here is the article from Doug Thorburn:

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 were ?helped? to their graves by those around them.? If they are to protect their positions of status, prestige and power, as well as incomes and wealth, close people can?t tell the addict he needs to stop drinking and using. Underlings can be too easily 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 someone to sometimes act badly and, in some cases, bizarrely. It?s not the enablers? fault (or even the addict?s, for that matter). However, disenabling provides the most certain path to recovery. Until every enabler stops protecting the addict from logical and natural consequences of misbehaviors (which include stupid actions), the odds of permanent sobriety are greatly reduced. Jackson, with his extraordinary talent and income-producing abilities, had everything going against him in ever leading a sober life: few if any would do anything to risk the millions they were making as a result of catering to him or selling his talents. Along with so many other celebrities, Jackson lived a life of extravagance fueled by his addiction, which inflated his ego, further fueling the addiction. He hardly had a chance.

Make no mistake about Michael Jackson?s bizarre behaviors over the last decade: they were symptomatic of a late-stage poly-drug addict. According to insiders, Jackson referred to white wine as "Jesus juice" and red wine as "Jesus blood" Such terms of endearment are an indication of a love for the drug alcohol that only an addict would use. Close persons were long aware that he usually drank wine out of soda cans in an effort to hide the consumption. Non-alcoholics have no need to hide the booze, since it isn?t a problem (and early-stage addicts don?t hide the use because they don?t yet exhibit obvious problems). Handlers occasionally whispered of various admissions into and "graduations" from rehab for addiction to pain killers, including Demerol and morphine. Any heroin addict will, in a pinch, substitute these drugs, as well as Oxycontin and Vicodin. Jackson was, essentially, a heroin addict, even if the media refused to identify him as such.

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 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 just one. Since Jackson reportedly owed as much as $62,000 to a Beverly Hills pharmacy we could reasonably conclude that Jackson combined enormous quantities of pharmaceuticals.

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 appears to have been dire for years. The former wife of private investigator Anthony Pelicano, Kat, remembers him at her house in August 1993, while dealing with a civil case accusing him of molestation, 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 was never 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 could buy him his freedom, which perpetuated his addiction.

Sadly, as is true of most addicts, there were likely hundreds of instances for which handlers, family, friends and law enforcers could have acted to stem the inevitable slide into an obvious late-stage addiction, which likely cost him his life. That the Michael Jackson of twenty years ago could have turned into what he died as boggles the mind. Yet psychotropic drug addiction respects no boundaries either in terms of who is afflicted or the resulting behaviors.

It is impossible to understand the life of Michael Jackson without comprehending the fundamental idea of substance addiction: that bizarre and egomaniacal behaviors follow addictive use. To better understand addiction, read Doug Thorburn?s Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse.

TO COMMENT to the author, send your email via the website, http://www.preventragedy.com or write to Doug Thorburn, P.O. Box 7777, Northridge, CA 91327-7777

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