This is just great.
The autopsy surgeon had yet to apply the saw to the suddenly vacated corporeal container of Michael Jackson, and there were all the rats in his camp, squeaking and squealing, scrabbling all over each other in a frenzied attempt to alternately assign and escape “blame.”
Out ahead of the pack Friday morning raced Brian Oxman, a “Jackson family attorney,” who scurried over to the UCLA Medical Center, where Jackson’s corpse had been belatedly transported on Thursday afternoon, after Jackson’s “live-in physician” and an unknown number of other panicked rodents skittered around his house for over an hour trying fruitlessly to revive him.
“I have warned,” keened Oxman, “that one day Michael Jackson would wake up dead, and that I would not be silent if that was the case, because of the misuse of medications.”
The newly outspoken Oxman disclosed that Jackson’s medication situation had seriously buggered Jackson’s rehearsals for an intended UK tour. Oxman hastened to add that “I do not know the extent of the medications that he was taking.”
Oxman next scampered onto the set of CNN’s American Morning, where he declared: “I talked to his family about it, I warned them—I said that Michael is overmedicating and that I did not want to see this kind of a case develop.”
Oxman has yet to explain why he did not publicly thump the tub about Jackson’s dire dope jones while the man was still alive.
Jackson was known to have developed opioid dependence beginning in 1984, after he burst into flames during the filming of a Pepsi commercial. In 1993 a tour was cut short when he began gobbling opiates amid accusations he had molested little boys. In 2005, after being found not guilty in a trial involving other molestation accusations, he tried to hit up Deepak Chopra, of all people, for a narcotics script. British tabloids are currently reporting that Jackson collapsed Thursday after receiving his daily injection of Demerol, a particularly potent opiate; allegedly he also routinely consumed Vicodin, Dilaudid, Soma, Xanax, Paxil, Zoloft, and Prilosec.
Now that he’s dead, and there is money to be made from the truth, we shall no doubt soon learn that Jackson has been more or less continuously, seriously fucked up on prescription pills for at least the past 25 years. Shoveled Jackson’s way by the same sort of Dr. Feelgoods who always supply, have always supplied, will always supply, those with wealth and/or power with whatever they “need.”
People around Jackson are already talking about it—in death, of course, rather than in life.
Here is Tarak Ben Ammar, a former Jackson producer:
“They are the ones who treated him throughout his career, who destroyed his face, who gave him medicine to ease his pain.
“He was a hypochondriac and one never really knew if he was sick because he was surrounded by charlatan doctors who were billing him for thousands and thousands of dollars worth of drugs.”
Here’s Chopra:
“There’s a plethora of doctors in Hollywood, they’re drug peddlers, they’re drug pushers, they just happen to be having a medical license and I hope that this episode today, this tragic death of a great human being, will bring to light the huge problem we have in Hollywood with some of the medical establishment, the celebrity doctors, who not only initiate people into the drug experience, but then they perpetuate it so that people become dependent on them.”
Problem is, Jackson sinking into death awash in an ocean of narcotics will now result in real suffering for those without wealth or power, those who truly do need prescription painkillers, who already experience real difficulty in obtaining them, and who will encounter increased difficulty, because, as is usually the case following such a celebrity death, the ever-irresponsible media will begin sounding the trumpet about prescription narcotics “abuse.”
Indeed, the blats are already being heard across the land:
From Elvis Presley to Marilyn Monroe to Janis Joplin and now Michael, the list of victims from prescription drugs reads like a who’s who of the talented and successful. But what isn’t reported in the mass media are the millions of people that are killed from prescription drugs that aren’t rich and famous. These people listen to their doctors, believe the propaganda of the pharmaceutical companies and think they are doing ‘the right thing’ by buying often toxic man-made chemicals and poisons to treat what ails them.
The truth is that 90% of illnesses, pains and other complaints that people go to their doctors for are treatable just as easily and more effectively without using drugs than with them. Pharmaceutical companies have made billions and billions of dollars convincing people that they ‘need pills’ in order to deal with what are ordinary, simple health issues that the body will correct by itself without medication.
Painkillers and Antidepressants are the two most abused kinds of drugs.
This is not only utter balderdash, it is seriously dangerous. The real problem with prescription painkillers in this country is undermedication—people suffering serious, unnecessary, intractable pain. Millions of people daily pay in pain because a relative handful abuse prescription painkillers recreationally . . . which is used to “justify” an intrusive, voracious governmental apparatus that tracks every narcotics prescription in the country, so that every doctor writing any narcotics prescription knows the government is peering, crossly, over his (or her) shoulder, and that with each signature affixed his (or her) precious license to practice is potentially on the line.
Somehow, of course, the Dr. Feelgoods never come under scrutiny—not until one of their famous patients famously dies. Only then do they face the prospect of governmental supervision, or sometimes the pokey.
Not so the publicly unknown doctor writing a script for a publicly unknown patient. S/he can get jacked and juked at any time; I know a vet tech, for chrissake, who has twice had DEA agents barge into his office to rummage through the records, determined to learn whether someone has run off with the kitty valium. And, whenever an out-of-control addict under the care of a Dr. Feelgood very publicly dies, as Jackson has, howling and hand-wringing ensue in the media, which translates into a more emboldened DEA, which applies increased pressure on publicly unknown doctors, which results in fewer scripts, and more pain, for publicly unknown patients.
So thanks, Michael—Michael and all you suddenly-out-of-a-real-lucrative-job medico Michael-enablers. People will hurt, because of you. People like my daughter, a spinal-cord patient, who is already having enough trouble out there in Pennsylvania, trying to convince a clot of Catholic-impaired medicos who “don’t believe in narcotics” to let loose enough pills to keep her out of pain.
Like I said: this is just great.
(I think this comment turned into the other half of my “Paralyzed Nation” diary. Now that I have a wordpress account I’m going to put them both up at some point, so thanks for linking to the 1st one.)
I see you also linked to an article about minorites not receiving adequate pain treatment. Ths probably applies to poor people too, however I was under-medicated even when I was part of an HMO. I don’t have a problem with the government keeping a list of those who use narcotics—if they use it to try to figure out how it’s getting on the street and such—but can’t it just be a regular database, instead of a system that makes everyone involved constantly fearful?
Oxman probably didn’t say anything publicly because he didn’t want to get Jackson in trouble and then be fired and have any potential new celebrity clients refuse to work with him for fear he would rat them out.
Prilosec? Isn’t that an antacid?
I don’t know that Jackson was a hypochondriac. There was speculation that he had lupus, which is often seen in people with vitiligo. Being an autoimmune disease, lupus can cause a whole host of nasty things to happen to the body. Jackson may have been a hypochondriac in that same way that I, a spinal cord injury patient, am a hypochondriac—we have to maintain constant vigilance over our health, which often means being more concerned with “little things” like a sore throat or a strange, unexplained ache, than a normal person would be, because we know it is easier for us to get sick, and easier for it to turn serious, than it is for other people. Now, if he really was popping pain pills with no need for them, that is not excused by this vigilance, nor really even related to it. Plenty of non “hypochondriacs” become drug addicts. I’ll wager that more do so. In my experience the drug users have always been the people who are convinced that they are in perfect health and nothing they do can or will ever hurt them. Doesn’t sound like a hypochondriac to me.
I must also take issue with Chopra’s assertion that Hollywood doctors encourage drug abuse in their clients—stars are perfectly capable of acquiring drug addictions without any help from their doctors, who, after all, have an interest in keeping them alive so even if they are prescribing unnecessary amounts, these amounts are “safe enough” to keep the star alive. If that star then decides to go to multiple doctors to obtain more drugs, that is hardly the fault of the doctor, who obviously wasn’t willing to give Jackson what he requested, or else he would not have felt the need to doctor shop.
I heard on the news earlier that Vicodin and Percocet are being recalled because there’s been a problem with people mixing it with acetominophen and then having liver problems. I guess this news is good and bad. It’s very bad for all the people out there who use Vidodin or Percocet and now have to switch to something else that might not work as well, or they might have to switch to something that’s not as strong if they aren’t allowed to try something stronger (assuming there isn’t something of similar strength available—I think Percocet is one of those that is stronger than Vicodin but weaker than, say, Dilaudid—it’s kind of in it’s own strength class, I think—so switching someone off of Percocet will probably create a lot of grief since you know it will be most doctor’s first inclination to put the patient on something weaker, not stronger.
But it’s good news because maybe Tylenol won’t be able to run those horrible ads where they claim that “Tylenol works WITH your body to relieve pain,” and hopefully it will lead to a greater consensus that people with chronic pain cannot be expected to just take Tylenol for the rest of their lives. It might lead to the development of more ibuprofen-cut painkillers (right now they are some, but they are new and not yet available in generic form) and hopefully even an understanding that it is better for patients like me to take un-cut painkillers like diluadid than to take Vicodin. It might end up working put for the better. We can hope.
David and I were just talking about it and he suggested that they should make a painkiller cut with naproxen sodium, which is stronger than Tylenol for most people. It has long-term effects on the heart, but you have to take a lot more than you have to take of Tylenol to cause damage. He also suggested that there should just be more options of the same opiate cut with different things, so that you can switch up here and there and thereby minimize the damage done to a particular organ, or so that you don’t so much ibuprofen that you get an ulcer, etc. I think these are good ideas.
Where exactly is this “90%” statistic coming from? 90% of people who go to their doctors have complaints that can be addressed without medicine? Uh-huh. So I guess next time I contract strep I should just sip some honey-lemon tea and then promptly infect David so he can go give it to his coworkers. After all, actually getting antibiotics for it would be “irresponsible.” Oh, and all those diabetics asking their doctors for insulin—they can just take cinnamon supplements! Because cinnamon helps normalize blood sugar—and it’s natural, and therefore not irresponsible!
The worst thing about that statement is that it is partially true, which will cause people to think that it is all true. The pharmaceutical companies do push pills on people, the best example being the administration of antidepressants to women so that they will stop complaining about other health problems like pain, fatigue, migraines, stomach problems, etc. There are lots of people who don’t need antidepressants who take them. Nowadays doctors prescribe them for sleep disorders, chronic pain—heck, they even give out anti-psychotics (which by the way, if you are not psychotic, have a possibility of making you psychotic) as migraine pills and for other similar ailments, though at least that is somewhat frowned upon, even though they gave it to me for “sleep”). Anti-seizure mediation is also a popular one to just throw at people complaining of pain, even though they are not FDA approved for pain, and even though your doctor might tell you they’ve proven effective against pain—it’s possible your doctor has been misled or bribed by a company like the manufacturers on Neurontin, an anti-convulsant whose makers bribed and pushed doctors to prescribe it for a whole host of off-label uses—insomnia, chronic pain, fatigue—and were eventually forced to pay out millions of dollars in fines. Yet they are still on the market.
Of course, maybe the quoted person was referring to the misuse of antidepressants, anti-psychotics and anti-convulants as “pain medication”, when he said that painkillers and antidepressants are the most abused kinds of drugs, because that is actually true. But somehow, especially in light of that ridiculous 90% figure, I doubt it. So this anti-pain medicine stigma is actually contributing to the misuse of medications. If people could just get a Vicodin or two a day to treat their sciatica or herniated disks, they wouldn’t be served a plethora of new chemicals that aren’t researched together and are wholly unnecessary. Do people really think that taking three Vicdoin a day is worse than putting someone on Seroquel (antipyshcotic), Prozac (antidepressant) and Neurontin? Really?
People already know to laugh at drug commercials because of the long list of side effects. “Hey consumer, take this to relieve your insomnia/fatigue/depression, etc, and just put up with headache, nausea, diarrhea, back ache, blurred vision, dry mouth, sexual dysfunction, driving while asleep, cooking while asleep, anal seepage, muscle twitches, shortness of breath, difficulty urinating, weight gain, swelling, memory problems, anemia, along with possible severe side effects like cardiac arrest, liver dysfunction and death.” Those are all authentic side effects I’ve heard of in advertisements.
This is unfortunate also, because when an ad comes out offering to treat something we haven’t heard of—like, say, Restless Leg Syndrome or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome—people laugh and think that these are just disorders that the pharmaceutical companies invented to make money from. This is not true. Restless Leg Syndrome exists and so does Chronic Fatigue Syndrome—I myself am quite glad that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has been officially recognized because it used to be something that doctors would just ascribe to being lazy, female, or maybe needing to eat more Prozac. Kind of like Fibromyalgia—it’s impossible to diagnose, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real; it doesn’t mean the person’s not suffering.
It is true that many people’s problems can be solved naturally. Many of the problems people suffer from today—fatigue, insomnia, stress—can be solved by changing living habits—but doctors need to stop thinking that is easy. If a woman is forced to work three jobs because she can’t afford a babysitter and needs the money to buy food, and therefore only gets four hours of sleep on the weekdays, she’s going to have stress, fatigue and insomnia. But just because her lifestyle is causing her symptoms, that doesn’t mean she can change her lifestyle. Not unless she wants to lose her house. Just like me. I know that stress and pain contribute to a lot of my ill health, but my doctors won’t give me enough to treat my pain, and the runaround that they and many other bureaucracies give me contributes greatly to my stress, which I do my best to handle. Should I be denied a sleeping pill because the things causing my insomnia—stress and pain—are caused by my lifestyle? Dangers of sleeping pills aside, the answer is no. You can’t deny a patient treatment because they can’t make the necessary changes in their lives. That would be like refusing to treat a patient’s lung cancer if they smoke or refusing to treat someone’s diabetes or heat disease because they’re overweight. It’s not right, and it not ethical.
Now, the other side of this is when doctors often prescribe unneeded medication. When I first had my spinal cord injury my doctors had me on so many pills I can’t even remember them all. I was on three different painkillers, only one of which (the opiate) did anything. The other two were an anti-inflammatory and an anti-convulsant. I was also on two different kinds of sleeping medication, an antacid, anti-psychotics (for pain and sleep, they said), an anti-spasmodic and one to control bladder spasms specifically. Sounds like overkill to me. If they could have given me more pills to actually help the pain, or actually make me better, great. But most of the stuff did nothing, and a lot of it actually made me worse. The side effects of one of my medications was “severe dizziness when going to sitting position from lying flat.” Yeah, that’s really what they needed to be giving me when trying to get me to sit up in the wheelchair after two weeks straight of having to lie flat in the hospital bed. Then there was the one that caused frequent urination and nightmares. I was already having nightmares from being a scared kid and didn’t need any help with those. I was also trying to learn how to use a catheter and frequent urination is not helpful to this cause. Another of the pills caused muscle weakness. Oh, yeah, great. Not only are my nerves screwed up but now my muscles are weak. Party.
When I finally started looking into my meds I stopped taking all of them but the opiate, the anti-bladder spasm one and the antacid. That’s all I needed. When you don’t walk you are more prone to acid reflux so antacids are good. It’s kind of a long story but the antispasmodic I was on has very strange side effects and has caused some people severe mental issues. I didn’t want to be on it because spasms were the only movement my muscles were getting and I didn’t want those to stop. I can understand why some people find them discomforting but I knew they were the key to my recovery. I eventually added Zoloft (for an increasingly fragile mental state do to stress and pain) and a muscle relaxer, which, aside from opiates, is the only thing that’s ever helped my pain. I also take about 20 different vitamins, which are almost completely overlooked by doctors. They always tell you on the bottles to “discuss the supplements you are taking with your doctor” but my doctors always tell me they don’t know much about supplements, and can’t recommend them anyway since they’re not FDA approved (funny, neither was Neurontin; not for some of what it was used for), and say that my best bet is not to take any supplements at all so as to avoid a drug interaction. Real helpful. I guarantee you vitamins did a lot more for me than many of my doctors did.
But I don’t want to attack doctors, because most of them genuinely do want to do good. They’ve just gotten so tangled up in regulations and fears that they sometimes forget to do what’s best for the patient—or they forget how to even know what that is. Society at large contributes to this, and it’s time we stopped. I’ve heard some say that health care costs would go down if doctors didn’t need to purchase so much malpractice insurance. That’s probably true. Oh, don’t get me wrong, you should have very right to sue your doctor if you’re harmed by them, but doctors shouldn’t be punished for trying their best to treat you. Even if that means taking risks and sometimes being wrong. Now, showing up for surgery drunk or falling asleep during surgery and nicking an artery is different. So is failing to pay attention to drug interactions, mistaking one patient’s file for the other, or accidentally leaving surgical instruments inside a patient (because that is criminal negligence). Some of these are negligence, some are accidents, but doctors just trying their best to help you should not have to live in fear.
Julia,
Both Vicodin and Percocet include acetaminophen in their compounding. They are forms of synthetic morphine (oxycodone and hydrocodone) with the acetaminophen combined. The trouble comes from taking enough narcotic at which time the acetaminophen may lead to liver trouble. The underlying narcotics are good drugs I prescribe at regular intervals for my patients, too. Even dogs like the stuff.
Abuse may occur with most any drug. Much is about the combinations and the quantities. Like you say people don’t need a physician to get themselves addicted. Anyone can do that by themselves.
Nice seeing you here. I have been remiss about visiting but as of today this site is on my radar screen for sure.
Peace, Jerry
I have to differ with you about the culpability of Jackson’s doctors. There is a long tradition of “Dr. Feelgoods” servicing the “needs” of Hollywood entertainers, and scandals about them surface from time to time, usually, as in this case, when one of their patients ODs. Enough information has already emerged about Jackson’s physical condition at the time of his death for even us laypeople to suggest that any doctor “treating” him would have HAD to have seen that the guy was a junkie. As you know from your own struggles with the health-care system, doctors are required to inquire, vigorously, as to what other medications a patient is receiving, and from whom. And as you also know from your own struggles with the health-care system, doctors are generally wary of prescribing large doses of narcotics to people. The point of this piece is that all those “usuals” are abandoned when the patient is rich and/or powerful. The rich and/or powerful are always able to get whatever drugs they “need,” and always will be. Even here in this little town, there is a doctor who caters to the wealthy and influential. I have been told I can receive narcotics from this gentleman simply by reciting a rote list of symptoms, and mentioning the names of those who referred me. That’s the way it always goes.
Here is a piece about the FDA panel’s recommendations on acetaminophen. You’ll note it’s concerned about what I’ve been railing about for years: using acetaminophen as cut in opiates. There is no reason for this, other than the acetaminophen racket’s control over the pharmaceutical industry. Opiates can easily be cut with aspirin, and/or be offered straight. Here is a piece that describes the symptoms of acetaminophen OD; looks to me like acetaminophen strikes down more people annually than does opiates. Madness.
Yeah, you’re probably right about the Hollywood doctors. So that one in town, can you go to him as long as you’re willing to shell out a lot of money and give him the name of a rich patient of his? That could be handy. I myself have been thinking about skipping down to Florida to one of those “walk-in pain clinics” but I think it would be a waste of money, since I’d have to pay out of pocket and fly down there every month. To bad…