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Jacksons v AEG Timeline Top Stories
More on the drugs that may have killed Jackson
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 1 July 2009
And so back to the drugs. As previously reported, Jackson’s personal doctor has denied that the singer had a shot of the morphine substitute drug Demerol shortly before his death, as had been reported. Meanwhile the LA coroner has denied reports that the singer’s autopsy found just partly dissolved pills in his stomach.
Nevertheless, rumours continue to circulate that the singer had been living on a dangerous combination of prescription drugs in order to overcome both physical and mental traumas, and to keep his strength up for the rehearsals of his upcoming O2 residency, and that one or another of those drugs probably led to the cardiac arrest that killed him last Thursday.
There have been more reports in that domain, one in particular from the AP, who have spoken to a nurse and nutrition counsellor who claims the singer had pleaded for her to get him a powerful sedative even though she warned him such a drug could be harmful. Cherilyn Lee says Jacko had been suffering from severe insomnia in recent months, and that she had had to reject repeated demands from him for the drug Diprivan. But she reckons he must have got some kind of sedative from another source, which could well have ultimately caused his death.
She tells the Associated Press that she already feared Jackson had such drugs before his death last week. She recalls how earlier in the month she was in Florida and got a call from one of Michael’s staff in LA. She says: “He called and was very frantic and said, ‘Michael needs to see you right away’. I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ And I could hear Michael in the background [saying] ‘One side of my body is hot, it’s hot, and one side of my body is cold. It’s very cold’. I said, ‘Tell him he needs to go the hospital. I don’t know what’s going on, but he needs to go to the hospital … right away’. At that point I knew that somebody had given him something that hit the central nervous system. He was in trouble and he was crying out”.
Lee adds that Jackson wasn’t interested in drugs for recreational reasons, but sought them to overcome physical pain, and more recently acute insomnia. He apparently told the nurse that he had had assurances from medics that the “medicine” he planned to take was safe. Lee recalls: “I said, ‘Michael, the only problem with you taking this medication’ – and I had a chill in my body and tears in my eyes three months ago – ‘the only problem is you’re going to take it and you’re not going to wake up'”.
Lee says she first started working for Jackson at the start of the year to offer nutritional advice for his children, but later counselled the singer on how he could use protein shakes and the like to give him more energy.
In possibly related news, TMZ report that the LAPD wants to talk to the singer’s long time dermatologist Arnold Klein regarding drugs that he may have prescribed to the singer. Given Lee’s comments, it might be that they believe it was him who got the singer the Diprivan or a similar drug.
