I'm curious about the toxicology reports, too. And I grew up with MJ as well. I vividly remember the first time I saw him on TV. He was this little kid, not much older than me and he was amazing.

These years of increasing oddities? Very sad. Another example of early fame contributing to personality derailment.

It's impossible to evaluate MJ's life on any continuum of normalcy, toxicology results notwithstanding.

I also grew up alongside him (he's but a few years older than me), but I always viewed him as a song and dance man of uber-pop proportions, not much more. A freak of nature. Not my cup of tea. But I can appreciate the unique talent and huge influence he represents. I certainly don't get that nostalgic fuzzy feeling taking me back to my youth when I hear Thriller. Some closer to REM's Perfect Circle (Murmur) does a much better job of that for me.

In the end, he was what he was: a pop icon cum freak show. And he was so far outside the realm of everydayness that his pharmaceutical drug intake tells me very little about him or any mental ailment he may have been suffering from. If anything, Jackson is a much better case for studying the environmental part of being-in-the-world. I mean, this is a man who lived in Neverland, had a pet monkey and had young boys over for secret pajama parties, and god knows what else.

I wouldn't get all teary about the missed opportunity to see him live in London. His best days were WAYYYYYY behind him. Seeing MJ live now seems little more than an act of voyeurism, except for the most devoted fans.

That's just what I thought killed him too. The guy FESSSED UP to being a "prescription" painkiller addict... a fact that got totally lost amongst the fiasco of his later life...

I'll go record as predicting the toxicology reports or prescription drug records will show that Michael was taking legal speed, aka, stimulant drugs doled out to treat ADHD, to get through his reported 6 hour nightly rehearsals to gear up for his upcoming 50 concert tour.

As a ps to my previous comment, I should have noted that I do not believe that stimulants will be determined to be the sole cause of Michael's death. I believe there will be a multitude of medications involved and it may be impossible to link it to one drug or one class of drugs.

What truly bothers me about the reaction of many to his death is the bashing of him. The type of comments "glad Sicko Jacko is dead, yay" comments. We don't have the right to judge him by media reports. Yes, he may have been odd, but the media does a poor job of showing the complete person. We don't know the extent of his genius behind the media reports.

If it does turn out that he was very drugged up, I'm sorry to see it end this way. Such a wonderful talent that brought happiness to so many for years. He truly was one of America's greatest musical talents of the 20th century. A sad way to end such a magnificent musician's life.

Frankly I think it will be a miracle if we get the full tox results on Michael Jackson. There will be a lot of people trying to keep the extent of his cocktail under wraps. Tox analyses on illegal drugs are a lot more detailed than they ever are on prescription stuff. The carelessness with which analyses are done on prescription meds as well as the disregard for complete disclosure in the name of family privacy when it's really medical professionals and the pharmaceutical industry that are being protected, not the victim (or the public!), does kind of drive me batty.

Yeah, Michael Jackson was the soundtrack to some very good parts of my youth. I can't think of a swimming pool or skating rink without him.

I would imagine drugging stage children to extend their productivity is pretty common and then drugs to cover injuries, narcotics for athletes and of course anti depressants are pretty much de rigueur for anyone who can afford them. Still drugs or no drugs, poor guy, in the end he's seems to have danced himself to death as the story I got was that he collapsed while rehearsing for his planned tour. I hope he's at peace.

To quote from the Phantom of the Opera, "Surely, Madame Giry, genius has turned to madness."


Would the genius, that had become locked within his lonely self, ever have come back out? We will never know. Peace to the Jackson family.

The pressure of having to get out there and perform after all the crap he's gotten from the media was probably too much.

Just ask Micky Rooney and Judy Garland about the drugging of child performers.

Jackson was an appealing performer in his younger days, but Cab Calloway was moonwalking long before Jackson was a gleam in his father's eye. There's very little new under the sun.

In the end, I cannot get all teary eyed over the demise of such an obvious pedophile. Talent does not even begin to make up for some things.

I feel so depressed even though i wasnt exactly his big fan...it's just everywhere, news, mtv, papers. And everyone is on abt how bad his childhood was and i feel sooo annoyed that his family didnt do much to help him, advise him about his skin colour or make his life more cheerful. Cant believe he has so many siblings, i dont know how strong or weak their relationship was but i know that they could have supported him a whole lot better than what they have. His wives couldnt do much either i heard....it's sad. People around him just seemed to have ignored his loneliness until he died ¬.¬ I hate that!!!
But i hope he rests in peace up there.

My theory is that Michael Jackson never could have performed for those London concerts given the cocktail of meds he was on. I think there was a bit of desperation going on there and maybe docs were giving him stimulants in an effort to enable him to get on the stage and practice. It would sure be interesting to know if he was on atypicals too as an "add on" for depression since we know those affect the heart too. As I said earlier I seriously doubt we are ever going to know all the things he was being given at the end. And I agree with others that his life had many tragic elements. He did have enormous talent.

Last but not least, I see the new doctor MJ hired two weeks ago is a cardiologist. It seems he's the guy who may have accidentally delivered the fatal dose of painkillers (a Demerol injection is being implicated right now) or whatever led to the cardiac arrest. It does make you wonder how well versed cardiologists really are in the adverse effects, especially the adverse cardiac effects, of psych drugs. Also it does seem that doctors everywhere are incredibly cavalier about the interactions between different classes of drugs. They really do not seem to "get it" that you can't administer a whole bunch of different drugs and not expect to tax the body in some serious way. Just as medical professionals compartmentalize their specialties, they seem to compartmentalize the medications too and don't see them as affecting the whole body, not just the system they are supposedly designed for.

The news is all over the Net that Michael J. was on both Zoloft & Paxil and one source said he had taken these two drugs for many years.

I wonder if this is what caused him to have such bizarre behavior and maybe even the pedophile inclinations although he was found not guilty of that charge.

I looked at a Timeline of his life and he seemed pretty normal for a Hollywood star :-) until about 1992 - 1993.

Just a thought.

He would join Roseanne Barr, Rosie O'Donnell and Britney Spears in the bizarre behavior category ----and extreme change in personality on SSRIs.

So medications not only killed him but ruined his life in other, more subtle ways.

There are close to 100 individual cases of bizzare behavior reported by the media of people on SSRIs at www.SSRIstories.com

On June 18, 2009 SSRI Stories posted an article on poisioning deaths that linked the combination of antidepressants & painkillers as a top death in the U.S. This article came from the National Safety Council.

SSRI Stories has 110 articles [about half from Journals] which point to the dangers of antidepressants.

Here is the article from SSRI Stories [in part]
------------------

http://www.ssristories.com/show.php?item=3426

Paragraph 15 reads: "According to the National Safety Council, adults account for most of the steep recent increase in unintentional poisoning deaths. Between 1993 and 2003, the death rate from unintentional poisonings from overdoses rose 107 percent among Americans ages 20 to 64."

Paragraphs 22 & 23 read: "In addition, Powell said, certain antidepressant drugs '“tend to compound the effects of opiates. ... It's more than adding one plus one'.”

"Combining the drugs, he said, produces 'a greater effect than the two drugs alone would produce,' which can be harmful or fatal."

http://www.omaha.com/article/20090618/NEWS01/706189868/0/FRONTPAGE

Pain killers can kill you
By Bob Glissmann
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

He needed something to knock down the pain inflicted by frequent kidney stones and achy joints.

A doctor sent him home with two strong painkillers, Vicodin and Lortab.

They worked. But he built up a tolerance.

So he took more.

Eventually, the Omaha man's doctor prescribed two other painkillers, Fentanyl and morphine.

The drugs he took can suppress a person's respiratory system. So sometimes, when he took too many, he would quit breathing until his wife roused him.

Not breathing would, understandably, make him anxious, so his doctor prescribed Valium, an anti-anxiety drug.

He started taking way too much of everything. He was, if you will, poisoning himself.

I have to agree with Rosie that the fact Michael Jackson has been on Zoloft and Paxil for years does explain a lot. I don't think any of us should underestimate just how much these drugs can contribute to totally bizarre and weird behavior. Of course he had other stressors dating back to childhood that were part of the picture but I certainly think that things would have played out a lot differently if he'd never been put on Zoloft and Paxil. How awful. It just makes me so angry and sad. And what in God's name was that doctor thinking giving him injections of Demerol three times a day?

MJ became a star back in a day and time when there was not such a great knowledge of the psychological impact of child stardom - we did not know because the stories of those who had suffered from this type of upbringing were not revealed in the media.

Now we know.

For decades, Michael needed decent psychological counseling, not a group of sycophants and hangers-on. Of all people, Uri Geller declared that he, as a friend of MJ, could yell at MJ about MJ's unhealthy behavior. But it did not require a psychic to see MJ's future clearly.

A lot has been said and will be said.

I think the most original idea for me to hear is this lifeline breakpoint at which the antidepressants start influencing the behavior of these stars. Mix with painkillers or alcohol and you too might befriend a chimp or shave your hair off.

My thoughts are similar to many posts here, since my childhood also paced the emergence of this childhood star. But this mental healthcounseling issue is all that I felt like blogging on.
http://www.medsvstherapy.com/2009/06/lesson-of-michael-jackson-child.html

All the comments will not bring michel back. But I pray that those who judge will one day be judged with the same impact they delivered to others without hesitation. Michel, may your good deeds not be discounted and may your heart be weighed with the balance of justice that yields not to temperament of man. May peace guide you in the heavens and earth.