Last Updated on February 6, 2022
It amazes me that any doctor would prescribe or supply the kind of hospital anesthesia reportedly found in Michael Jackson’s home. But an NBC News investigation had an unidentified former actor visit a doctor with a reputation of “taking care”  of celebrities with big bankrolls, and after no exam at all, he came out with prescriptions for things like Oxycontin and Vicotin.
According to their decoy, he gave this doctor he’d never met a story about injuring an old back injury and a few other complaints, and $2,000 in cash, then emerged with not only four prescriptions, but a bag of samples to boot!
Some celebrities are believed to be hiring doctors to hand out pills at a price tag of $30,000-$50,000 per month.
Yes, I said per month.
More than the ridiculous amounts of cash, there’s a sort of Catch-22 with a doctor’s image: a doctor who plays by a celebrity’s rules is showered with praise and referrals, while one who follows his oath is threatened with what amounts to a negative whispering campaign among elite clients with deep pockets.
A hefty price that still ought to seem small compared to the potential damage that can be done.
We need a massive law overhaul on this: NBC reports that prosecuting these “Dr. Feelgoods”  requires proof of either malice or gross negligence. If a doc handing a stack of prescriptions to someone he’s never heard of and barely examined, compared to the Hippocratic Oath, isn’t gross negligence, I don’t know what is.
A good point, Jeff.
I agree that it’s likely he was taking more than 10mg per day, but without even a hint of the pill size, it’s useless information.
I agree, and I think Jackson’s death may be the tipping point on this issue. How much longer can we ignore this?
On a related note, I was a little aggravated the other night when the news broke that Michael Jackson was taking “10 to 40 Xanax a day.” That’s how they reported it, just the number of pills.
Xanax comes in the following mg dosages: .25, .5, 1, and 2. It is recommended that you not exceed 10mg per day, and that’s assuming you have little or no tolerance built up for it.
They didn’t say what the prescription was for. Was he taking 10 tablets of the 1mg dosage? Was he taking 40 of the .25? Both of those would have him taking 10mg/day.
Based on other reports of his drug use, it’s probably more likely that he was exceeding the 10mg recommendation, but I have no evidence of that. My point is just that this was a case of a few reporters and anchors giving only part of the story, the part that sounds excessive and sensationalistic. I suspect most viewers have no idea that hearing “10 to 40 Xanax per day” tells them almost nothing.