DD55 said:

1Sasha said:

People I respect who are sober now and/or who treat/counsel people with abuse issues have said he used for decades, probably. You are right about those who put him on a pedestal and slaughter anyone who says a word that knocks him down a little bit.

"Toxicology results revealed Prince's blood fentanyl level measured 67.8 milligrams. Three is considered fatal by experts. His liver fentanyl level topped 435 milligrams. Anything above 69 is toxic, according to investigators. And his gastric fentanyl registered at 14,000, an extraordinarily high amount, and more than his 112-pound body could handle, according to sources." .

PLEASE if there is a scientist or physician on the org. who would be kind enough to to answer the following questions I would be very grateful:

IF Prince was not habituated to fentanly and accidentally (as per the ME) took this massive, fatal dose, my understanding is that death would have come almost instantly. HOW did such high levels make it to his liver?, does metabolism continue after death? I can understand high levels in blood and gastric juices but are these liver values hiding-in-plain-sight evidence of habituation? Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me understand this

Some of you have a way of only picking out what you want to read or see in a stituation.

There is a big difference between abusing meds and being dependent on them. There is no way he was abusing pain pills for 20 years and working 100 hour weeks and sometimes completly whole albums in a day or two. Perfroming long rehersals, shows and after shows. Interacting with people for long hours and even having people pack his bags and handle his personal things and not notice.

Estates cannot sue for defamation and we already know about drugs so why are not more people providing us with stories about his abuse of drugs? What we have heard is a few people telling us he had pain and they knew he took pain pills for pain (Tavis Smiley )

At some point he went past being dependent to abuse. We just do not know the details as to why. Some of us think that he had increasing pain or illness. We have very good clues that there was more going on then pill addiction and in time whatever was going on the last months of his life will come out.

The question of course is why are so many people not understanding any of this and so stuck on the drug narrative?

Bodhitheblackdog said:

Ditto. Those results are stunning.

Bodhitheblackdog said:

1Sasha said:

People I respect who are sober now and/or who treat/counsel people with abuse issues have said he used for decades, probably. You are right about those who put him on a pedestal and slaughter anyone who says a word that knocks him down a little bit.

"Toxicology results revealed Prince's blood fentanyl level measured 67.8 milligrams. Three is considered fatal by experts. His liver fentanyl level topped 435 milligrams. Anything above 69 is toxic, according to investigators. And his gastric fentanyl registered at 14,000, an extraordinarily high amount, and more than his 112-pound body could handle, according to sources." .

PLEASE if there is a scientist or physician on the org. who would be kind enough to to answer the following questions I would be very grateful:

IF Prince was not habituated to fentanly and accidentally (as per the ME) took this massive, fatal dose, my understanding is that death would have come almost instantly. HOW did such high levels make it to his liver?, does metabolism continue after death? I can understand high levels in blood and gastric juices but are these liver values hiding-in-plain-sight evidence of habituation? Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me understand this

I am not a scientist or a doctor. However, your question made curious so I checked the U.S. National Library of Medicine site. The link is below. This article indicates that opiod metabolism takes place primarily in the liver.

I think that a pharmacist could also probably shed some light on your question.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704133/

leec1 said:

Bodhitheblackdog said:

"Toxicology results revealed Prince's blood fentanyl level measured 67.8 milligrams. Three is considered fatal by experts. His liver fentanyl level topped 435 milligrams. Anything above 69 is toxic, according to investigators. And his gastric fentanyl registered at 14,000, an extraordinarily high amount, and more than his 112-pound body could handle, according to sources." .

PLEASE if there is a scientist or physician on the org. who would be kind enough to to answer the following questions I would be very grateful:

IF Prince was not habituated to fentanly and accidentally (as per the ME) took this massive, fatal dose, my understanding is that death would have come almost instantly. HOW did such high levels make it to his liver?, does metabolism continue after death? I can understand high levels in blood and gastric juices but are these liver values hiding-in-plain-sight evidence of habituation? Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me understand this

I am not a scientist or a doctor. However, your question made curious so I checked the U.S. National Library of Medicine site. The link is below. This article indicates that opiod metabolism takes place primarily in the liver.

I think that a pharmacist could also probably shed some light on your question.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704133/

I am posting one further link that I found from a physician, which I scanned but didn't read in its entirety that also mentions that the metabolism is primarily in the liver.

http://ether.stanford.edu/urology/opiodmetabolism.pdf

1Sasha said:

Ditto. Those results are stunning.

I still wonder if anyone in his region died from levels that high and if this was from one pill or dozens of pills?

You aren't the only person who has asked that question. Where are the local reporters who should be following this case? Where are the national reporters, like Brian Ross, who should be asking that question? We all know how little it takes of Fent to kill, but did he take one pill that was loaded, or did he swallow a handful? In my mind, a handful signifies deliberate and one pill accidental. I was reading an internet site today and the members were up in arms - nearly 15 months and we've got no word on what they've got - they wanted a response from the police department and were going to start harassing the PD for answers.

1Sasha said:

You aren't the only person who has asked that question. Where are the local reporters who should be following this case? Where are the national reporters, like Brian Ross, who should be asking that question? We all know how little it takes of Fent to kill, but did he take one pill that was loaded, or did he swallow a handful? In my mind, a handful signifies deliberate and one pill accidental. I was reading an internet site today and the members were up in arms - nearly 15 months and we've got no word on what they've got - they wanted a response from the police department and were going to start harassing the PD for answers.

It is a question that would explain a lot. If the ME thinks accidental than he took one or a few.

If he took a whole bottle than it was done on purpose and I would think they would have gone with sucide but they did not have a note or any other indications of sucidial so maybe that is why they went with accidental.

Yet the police are suppose to be looking for the supplier. So I do not know what to think.

1Sasha said:

You aren't the only person who has asked that question. Where are the local reporters who should be following this case? Where are the national reporters, like Brian Ross, who should be asking that question? We all know how little it takes of Fent to kill, but did he take one pill that was loaded, or did he swallow a handful? In my mind, a handful signifies deliberate and one pill accidental. I was reading an internet site today and the members were up in arms - nearly 15 months and we've got no word on what they've got - they wanted a response from the police department and were going to start harassing the PD for answers.

Ugh, I'm pretty sure I know which 'internet site' you're referring to, and that bunch aren't going to get much accomplished by 'harassing' the Carver County police for answers.

*

The above said, I surely agree with you about the pills - was it one pill of great potency, or a handfull? The difference of those two scenarios is massive and meaningful, and it is frustrating to not know.

Bodhitheblackdog said:

Bodhitheblackdog said:

moonsister said:

Bodhitheblackdog said:

"Toxicology results revealed Prince's blood fentanyl level measured 67.8 milligrams. Three is considered fatal by experts. His liver fentanyl level topped 435 milligrams. Anything above 69 is toxic, according to investigators. And his gastric fentanyl registered at 14,000, an extraordinarily high amount, and more than his 112-pound body could handle, according to sources." .

PLEASE if there is a scientist or physician on the org. who would be kind enough to to answer the following questions I would be very grateful:

IF Prince was not habituated to fentanly and accidentally (as per the ME) took this massive, fatal dose, my understanding is that death would have come almost instantly. HOW did such high levels make it to his liver?, does metabolism continue after death? I can understand high levels in blood and gastric juices but are these liver values hiding-in-plain-sight evidence of habituation? Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me understand this

IIRC tho a test a week prior showed no fentanyl in his body so ruled him out as being a long term user of fentanyl. So considering there were 100 illicit Vicodin found with 24 having fentanyl it seems to me he died from just one pill and God help us against this epidemic. Seems a total accident to me.

i don't get the "coincidence" of the previous od, I really don't. I think something else was going on still. But yes it is a frightening problem, couple weeks ago I watched a docu on The Gits, and Mia Zapata, punk singer who was just on the cusp of fame and fortune, she was murdered walking home drunk. Anyway, having known her best friend and also how all those musicians lived at the time, I wondered where some of them were. There was one particular guy who i used to argue about everything with, he ended up being a junkie and although I can't find much info, I guess that's how he died a couple years ago. It's crazy the shit people do to themselves to fit in with others, they didn't like me much because I was "wierd" to them and didn't fuck around. I'm still here though and I have all of my faculties.

anyway, i do think it' possible that Prince was making sure of finishing what he started on the plane. Hate the idea, but I do think it's a possibility. Either way, something is being hidden.

CharismaDove said:

herb4 said:

Because he was PRRRIIINNNNCE! Larger than life, above it all and superhuman. If i read "He could not have been along term abuser of these drugs and acheive at the level he did" one more fucking time, I'm going to do my detractors a favor and rip my fucking eyeballs out. I've posted numerous examples of very high functioning drug users who dabbled in things for more nefarious than what finally did Prince in but people seem to want to plug their fingers in their ears and go "nu-uh".

It's astonishing to read and when it's not funny, it's fucking depressing and infuriating. Knowing that some of the people here might some day wind in my jury box gives me the shudders.

You put into words everything I was thinking.

"If i read "He could not have been along term abuser of these drugs and acheive at the level he did" one more fucking time, I'm going to do my detractors a favor and rip my fucking eyeballs out."

THANK YOU. This is the most annoying shit ever and makes it painfully obvious that whoever's saying it hasn't really done drugs and lacks a real knowledge of it outside what they read about it (which isn't shit). I know the public perception is that 'druggies' act slow, incoherent, and unable to get anything done but get their next fix. These people don't understand how pills work. For many people, they enhance the quality of their life if taken right. For people who need pills, the pills don't make them stumble around like idiots especially after tolerance is built. It helps them accomplish daily things and way more so why is it hard for some posters to believe Prince used medication? He spoke of having depression twice before and had chronic pain so yeah the news he became addicted to opiates isn't hard to believe. It's sad, but just the way it ended. But that doesn't change the fact that, if taken in moderate doses by a healthy person (and P was VERY health-conscious and athletic) responsibly, then it is very possible to go a few decades strong getting shit done. And no one's even saying he was abusing since the 80s (there's no evidence) we're just logically stating that if P's been taking painkillers since 01 or so then there's a chance he used drugs beforehand too. Nothing wrong with that. It's just a sad FACT that near the end, his dependency became addiction and cost him his life

Maybe we've had it bass-ackwards since the 80's...maybe Prince was controlling, mysterious, withdrawn BECAUSE he had a pill habit and keeping people at arms-length was to keep his secret hidden. Maybe his anti-drug statements were a defensive deflection. Maybe the constant womanizing and 'inability' to be truly intimate/loyal was another way of keeping others from putting 2 and 2 together by being ultimately never really in a relationship, always with one foot out the door...a purposeful strategy. Maybe rattling around in PP for decades was to avoid any semblance of a normal home life where chemicalized behaviors would have appeared more noticable than in a 24/7 rock n roll party pressure cooker. Maybe the very intense Prince-ness we all recognized and loved was Prince-on-pills all along and the last time there was a straight-sober-clean Prince was before-it-all-began when he was the kid with the big Afro and no girlfriend in high school, practicing piano alone during every lunch hour. As for the bolded above...maybe the pills made the prolific creation of his magnificent music POSSIBLE. Maybe we'll never know which came first: Prince...or pills.

PeteSilas said:

anyway, i do think it' possible that Prince was making sure of finishing what he started on the plane. Hate the idea, but I do think it's a possibility. Either way, something is being hidden.

I agree with you.

drugs taken to that extreme do not help anyone in the long run. You simply cannot keep that up and continue to be that productive long term. I think do think that people start out in small ways, they say elvis started drugs by taking pills to stay awake in the army, that turned into what we got with the 70's elvis. Also, too many people are saying the same thing about the time they were with him, that there was no indication he was on anything. I think the od might be a smokescreen, i mean how hard is it to believe a rockstar od'd? my question is, what are they/he hiding? The shame must be worse than the od which to me makes me give some credence to the aids rumours. It's still a mystery though.

Bodhitheblackdog said:

CharismaDove said:

You put into words everything I was thinking.

"If i read "He could not have been along term abuser of these drugs and acheive at the level he did" one more fucking time, I'm going to do my detractors a favor and rip my fucking eyeballs out."

THANK YOU. This is the most annoying shit ever and makes it painfully obvious that whoever's saying it hasn't really done drugs and lacks a real knowledge of it outside what they read about it (which isn't shit). I know the public perception is that 'druggies' act slow, incoherent, and unable to get anything done but get their next fix. These people don't understand how pills work. For many people, they enhance the quality of their life if taken right. For people who need pills, the pills don't make them stumble around like idiots especially after tolerance is built. It helps them accomplish daily things and way more so why is it hard for some posters to believe Prince used medication? He spoke of having depression twice before and had chronic pain so yeah the news he became addicted to opiates isn't hard to believe. It's sad, but just the way it ended. But that doesn't change the fact that, if taken in moderate doses by a healthy person (and P was VERY health-conscious and athletic) responsibly, then it is very possible to go a few decades strong getting shit done. And no one's even saying he was abusing since the 80s (there's no evidence) we're just logically stating that if P's been taking painkillers since 01 or so then there's a chance he used drugs beforehand too. Nothing wrong with that. It's just a sad FACT that near the end, his dependency became addiction and cost him his life

Maybe we've had it bass-ackwards since the 80's...maybe Prince was controlling, mysterious, withdrawn BECAUSE he had a pill habit and keeping people at arms-length was to keep his secret hidden. Maybe his anti-drug statements were a defensive deflection. Maybe the constant womanizing and 'inability' to be truly intimate/loyal was another way of keeping others from putting 2 and 2 together by being ultimately never really in a relationship, always with one foot out the door...a purposeful strategy. Maybe rattling around in PP for decades was to avoid any semblance of a normal home life where chemicalized behaviors would have appeared more noticable than in a 24/7 rock n roll party pressure cooker. Maybe the very intense Prince-ness we all recognized and loved was Prince-on-pills all along and the last time there was a straight-sober-clean Prince was before-it-all-began when he was the kid with the big Afro and no girlfriend in high school, practicing piano alone during every lunch hour. As for the bolded above...maybe the pills made the prolific creation of his magnificent music POSSIBLE. Maybe we'll never know which came first: Prince...or pills.

PeteSilas said:

drugs taken to that extreme do not help anyone in the long run. You simply cannot keep that up and continue to be that productive long term. I think do think that people start out in small ways, they say elvis started drugs by taking pills to stay awake in the army, that turned into what we got with the 70's elvis. Also, too many people are saying the same thing about the time they were with him, that there was no indication he was on anything. I think the od might be a smokescreen, i mean how hard is it to believe a rockstar od'd? my question is, what are they/he hiding? The shame must be worse than the od which to me makes me give some credence to the aids rumours. It's still a mystery though.

Bodhitheblackdog said:

Maybe we've had it bass-ackwards since the 80's...maybe Prince was controlling, mysterious, withdrawn BECAUSE he had a pill habit and keeping people at arms-length was to keep his secret hidden. Maybe his anti-drug statements were a defensive deflection. Maybe the constant womanizing and 'inability' to be truly intimate/loyal was another way of keeping others from putting 2 and 2 together by being ultimately never really in a relationship, always with one foot out the door...a purposeful strategy. Maybe rattling around in PP for decades was to avoid any semblance of a normal home life where chemicalized behaviors would have appeared more noticable than in a 24/7 rock n roll party pressure cooker. Maybe the very intense Prince-ness we all recognized and loved was Prince-on-pills all along and the last time there was a straight-sober-clean Prince was before-it-all-began when he was the kid with the big Afro and no girlfriend in high school, practicing piano alone during every lunch hour. As for the bolded above...maybe the pills made the prolific creation of his magnificent music POSSIBLE. Maybe we'll never know which came first: Prince...or pills.

PeteSilas; re the parts of your response I bolded: I can never understand it when people say there was no indication he was on anything...Really? No sleep and very little food/water for days on end for YEARS is not even remotely normal/healthy behavior..nor is wearing makeup 24/7 for men OR women. Now we know the price of being in the Purple Kingdom...the suspension of logic, common sense and any propensity to tell the truth. Re the shame/AIDS scenario... a distinct possibility thanks to the religious stew he was marinating in most of his life.

Bodhitheblackdog said:

PeteSilas said:

drugs taken to that extreme do not help anyone in the long run. You simply cannot keep that up and continue to be that productive long term. I think do think that people start out in small ways, they say elvis started drugs by taking pills to stay awake in the army, that turned into what we got with the 70's elvis. Also, too many people are saying the same thing about the time they were with him, that there was no indication he was on anything. I think the od might be a smokescreen, i mean how hard is it to believe a rockstar od'd? my question is, what are they/he hiding? The shame must be worse than the od which to me makes me give some credence to the aids rumours. It's still a mystery though.

PeteSilas; re the parts of your response I bolded: I can never understand it when people say there was no indication he was on anything...Really? No sleep and very little food/water for days on end for YEARS is not even remotely normal/healthy behavior..nor is wearing makeup 24/7 for men OR women. Now we know the price of being in the Purple Kingdom...the suspension of logic, common sense and any propensity to tell the truth. Re the shame/AIDS scenario... a distinct possibility thanks to the religious stew he was marinating in most of his life.

DD55 said:

Bodhitheblackdog said:

PeteSilas; re the parts of your response I bolded: I can never understand it when people say there was no indication he was on anything...Really? No sleep and very little food/water for days on end for YEARS is not even remotely normal/healthy behavior..nor is wearing makeup 24/7 for men OR women. Now we know the price of being in the Purple Kingdom...the suspension of logic, common sense and any propensity to tell the truth. Re the shame/AIDS scenario... a distinct possibility thanks to the religious stew he was marinating in most of his life.

Bod and Pete: The answer to the mystery is probably somewhere in there. With P, there were few interviews, not notes during interviews, no tapes during interviews and it always struck me as odd, not just Princly. I would want my words recorded so they could not be misrepresented. What was he afraid of being quoted as saying? Why the deniability ‘insurance’? He said he was often ‘misquoted’, he sometimes said that everything the media said/wrote was ‘made up.’ hummmmm.

.

Back to that awful April day. Remember the sheriff announced no foul play and it was accidental - BEFORE the autopsy. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong.) Perhaps they did later find other ‘evidence’ and decided to just let things be, rather than stir up another huge controversy (yes, the autopsy report is a legal document…. but as long as there is a tiny, tiny….little room for doubt, it can’t be called ‘fraudulent’. Legal ppl weigh in pls.).

.

What do I believe? I’m not sure really. I do think the elevator was a tell and there were reports of a ‘note’ but those reports were quickly squashed. Tabloid made up? Who knows?

.

At the end of the day, I don’t love him any less nor do i think less of him or his music.

.

But the entire situation does bring out the curiosity in me… big time. [Don’t throw anything at me.] but I secretly wish / hope many, many people come forward and write books about him and his life, from all time periods. Honestly, not in the ’tell all’ spirit but in a way for us (and history) to put all facets of his life together to get a picture of this man who was such an enigma, yet so loved by many.

.

Any book that is published people scoff…. well, he isn’t here to defend himself!… But the more information we have the better and we will be able of finally understand his life and struggles.

.

So many unanswered questions.

.

kind regards, DD55

YES re the elevator and agree with the rest of your post and appreciate the kind and eloquent way you expressed what so many with heavy hearts are thinking.

Bodhitheblackdog said:

laurarichardson said:

Some of you have a way of only picking out what you want to read or see in a stituation.

The question of course is why are so many people not understanding any of this and so stuck on the drug narrative?

God, you're dense. Or willfully obtuse. Just LOL at the textbook projection in that first sentence.

I'm gonna keep this one short since I'm starting to think you gloss over long posts.

As to your last question, I'm gonna out on a fucking limb here and say "because that's how Prince died".

It's been fucking explained to you a hundred times that addiction and dependence on these things (or other substances) is nothing like how you describe it. For all you know, one of your high school teachers were sneaking nips of JD in the lounge at lunch or gobbling diet pills. It may have caught up to them later. Maybe not. But I guarantee you never knew it and somehow they managed to teach geometry.

Your head seems to be lined with rebar, lead or some bizarre manifestation of its own personal ozone layer.

Jesus Christ. Try less posting and more READING.

[Edited 6/22/17 15:02pm]

sonshine said:

Bodhitheblackdog said:

Maybe we've had it bass-ackwards since the 80's...maybe Prince was controlling, mysterious, withdrawn BECAUSE he had a pill habit and keeping people at arms-length was to keep his secret hidden. Maybe his anti-drug statements were a defensive deflection. Maybe the constant womanizing and 'inability' to be truly intimate/loyal was another way of keeping others from putting 2 and 2 together by being ultimately never really in a relationship, always with one foot out the door...a purposeful strategy. Maybe rattling around in PP for decades was to avoid any semblance of a normal home life where chemicalized behaviors would have appeared more noticable than in a 24/7 rock n roll party pressure cooker. Maybe the very intense Prince-ness we all recognized and loved was Prince-on-pills all along and the last time there was a straight-sober-clean Prince was before-it-all-began when he was the kid with the big Afro and no girlfriend in high school, practicing piano alone during every lunch hour. As for the bolded above...maybe the pills made the prolific creation of his magnificent music POSSIBLE. Maybe we'll never know which came first: Prince...or pills.

Bingo! I haven't been brave enough to suggest such a thing here tho. IT DOES NOT CHANGE HOW I FEEL ABOUT HIM AS AN INDIVIDUAL OR AN ARTIST, NOR DOES IT DIMINISH HIM IN ANY WAY IN MY EYES. As someone who is only a few years younger than Prince, who lived in MN, and who partied in Mpls during the 80's you heard things. Mpls is a relatively small city and Prince was in his heyday. There was always gossip about Prince. Sometimes the gossip was drug related. I never gave any of it much thought. I dismissed it as rumors from unreliable sources. It certainly was of no interest to me to find out whether it was true or not. Anything is possible i guess. I have aquaintances who are part time professional musicians and they told me the connection between musicians and drugs runs deep. Its pervasive. Most artists need something to enhance their creativity. Art is very personal. There is a level of discomfort inherent in exposing your innermost self to an audience. No matter how much you think Prince liked to perform, no matter how comfortable you think he appeared on stsge, there is absolutely no way he did not experience some level of anxiety due to his line of work.

Totally agree,,and furthermore, I think the non-stop rehearsing and on-going critiquing of every show with the aim of making them tighter and better speaks to his total discomfort with the scrutiny of being on stage and being so exposed...the real exposure in the early years wasn't in his underpants...it was his singing his heart out about being alone and lonely and feeling rejected and misunderstood...hide behind makeup, deflect by cross-dressing, hide behind Big Chick...Prince was simply not comfortable being Prince. In EVERY interview I ever saw with him, his posing/posturing was unnatural and self-conscious to the extreme...he said things designed quite obviously to further his mystique...all the time! Sometimes I think he created this monster: I -am-music and everyone wants me that while not untrue...eventually destroyed him.

PeteSilas said:

moonsister said:

Bodhitheblackdog said: IIRC tho a test a week prior showed no fentanyl in his body so ruled him out as being a long term user of fentanyl. So considering there were 100 illicit Vicodin found with 24 having fentanyl it seems to me he died from just one pill and God help us against this epidemic. Seems a total accident to me.

i don't get the "coincidence" of the previous od, I really don't.

"Drug dependency" and in all likelihood a genuine attempt to kick the habit; alone and by himslef with no help like Prince tackled most things. There is no "coincidence". Quite the opposite. It was the emersion of a pattern if anything.

herb4 said:

laurarichardson said:

Some of you have a way of only picking out what you want to read or see in a stituation.

The question of course is why are so many people not understanding any of this and so stuck on the drug narrative?

God, you're dense. Or willfully obtuse. Just LOL at the textbook projection in that first sentence. Here, I brought you something:

[img]https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/13401090?wid=328&hei=328&qlt=80&fmt=pjpeg[/img]

I'm gonna keep this one short since I'm starting to think you gloss over long posts.

As to your last question, I'm gonna out on a fucking limb here and say "because that's how Prince died".

It's been fucking explained to you a hundred times that addiction and dependence on these things (or other substances) is nothing like how you describe it. For all you know, one of your high school teachers were sneaking nips of JD in the lounge at lunch or gobbling diet pills. It may have caught up to them later. Maybe not. But I guarantee you never knew it and somehow they managed to teach geometry.

Your head seems to be lined with rebar, lead or some bizarre manifestation of its own personal ozone layer.

Jesus Christ. Try less posting and more READING.

Hey , Herb4, I almost posted this exact sentiment to LR yesterday LOL. But, really, you shouldn't get so worked up over her/him...LR's obtusenss is calculating and purposeful...it's all about attention-seeking.

Bodhitheblackdog said:

CharismaDove said:

You put into words everything I was thinking.

"If i read "He could not have been along term abuser of these drugs and acheive at the level he did" one more fucking time, I'm going to do my detractors a favor and rip my fucking eyeballs out."

THANK YOU. This is the most annoying shit ever and makes it painfully obvious that whoever's saying it hasn't really done drugs and lacks a real knowledge of it outside what they read about it (which isn't shit). I know the public perception is that 'druggies' act slow, incoherent, and unable to get anything done but get their next fix. These people don't understand how pills work. For many people, they enhance the quality of their life if taken right. For people who need pills, the pills don't make them stumble around like idiots especially after tolerance is built. It helps them accomplish daily things and way more so why is it hard for some posters to believe Prince used medication? He spoke of having depression twice before and had chronic pain so yeah the news he became addicted to opiates isn't hard to believe. It's sad, but just the way it ended. But that doesn't change the fact that, if taken in moderate doses by a healthy person (and P was VERY health-conscious and athletic) responsibly, then it is very possible to go a few decades strong getting shit done. And no one's even saying he was abusing since the 80s (there's no evidence) we're just logically stating that if P's been taking painkillers since 01 or so then there's a chance he used drugs beforehand too. Nothing wrong with that. It's just a sad FACT that near the end, his dependency became addiction and cost him his life

Maybe we've had it bass-ackwards since the 80's...maybe Prince was controlling, mysterious, withdrawn BECAUSE he had a pill habit and keeping people at arms-length was to keep his secret hidden. Maybe his anti-drug statements were a defensive deflection. Maybe the constant womanizing and 'inability' to be truly intimate/loyal was another way of keeping others from putting 2 and 2 together by being ultimately never really in a relationship, always with one foot out the door...a purposeful strategy. Maybe rattling around in PP for decades was to avoid any semblance of a normal home life where chemicalized behaviors would have appeared more noticable than in a 24/7 rock n roll party pressure cooker. Maybe the very intense Prince-ness we all recognized and loved was Prince-on-pills all along and the last time there was a straight-sober-clean Prince was before-it-all-began when he was the kid with the big Afro and no girlfriend in high school, practicing piano alone during every lunch hour. As for the bolded above...maybe the pills made the prolific creation of his magnificent music POSSIBLE. Maybe we'll never know which came first: Prince...or pills.

Maybe, but I think that's a stretch too far in the other direction and I have a hard time seeing it. Almost everything the dude did was private and guarded unless he chose to expose it.

I don't think that Prince was a "junkie" in the textbook sense, like Amy Whinehouse, Keith Richards, Miles Davis, Carrie Fischer or even writers and known, heavy and unapologetic drug abusers like William S. Burroughs or Hunter S. Thompson. I tend to believe he mostly took these meds as prescribed for the most part and, as his tolerance built, GRADUALLY increased his intake.

For someone as intensely private as Prince was, I feel confident stating that his relationship with his doctors and ANY medicine he was taking would have fallen into the higher categorical level of that tendency. I don't buy the suicide theories either but even those are far more plausible than the suggestion that he was intentionally rubbed out.

But I'll bow out now and let LR post yet again about how no one who "abuses drugs" can ever sustain any sort of creative longevity nor achieve anything meaningful over time.

Bodhitheblackdog said:

herb4 said:

God, you're dense. Or willfully obtuse. Just LOL at the textbook projection in that first sentence. Here, I brought you something:

[img]https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/13401090?wid=328&hei=328&qlt=80&fmt=pjpeg[/img]

I'm gonna keep this one short since I'm starting to think you gloss over long posts.

As to your last question, I'm gonna out on a fucking limb here and say "because that's how Prince died".

It's been fucking explained to you a hundred times that addiction and dependence on these things (or other substances) is nothing like how you describe it. For all you know, one of your high school teachers were sneaking nips of JD in the lounge at lunch or gobbling diet pills. It may have caught up to them later. Maybe not. But I guarantee you never knew it and somehow they managed to teach geometry.

Your head seems to be lined with rebar, lead or some bizarre manifestation of its own personal ozone layer.

Jesus Christ. Try less posting and more READING.

Hey , Herb4, I almost posted this exact sentiment to LR yesterday LOL. But, really, you shouldn't get so worked up over her/him...LR's obtusenss is calculating and purposeful...it's all about attention-seeking.

Meh...I'm just free-forming here and I enjoy writing, especially about subjects I care about and know a few things (Prince, drugs, addiction, etc.) so I tend to go off on tangents. I find it cathartic sometimes even if I sometimes dread the replies the next morning, knowing my mind can't take it before reading the new sand heading off to work. Like I said in another thread, I don't presume to know EVERYTHING but not knowing 5% of something doesn't automatically make something a deep conspiratorial mystery either and taking a giant shit on Wendy or Mayte - people who actually DID know Prince - and substituting a half baked personal opinion in place of theirs sort of gets my goat and really lights a fire under me.


Godspeed to the few sane patient posters here that help make us all appear a little less crazy and obsessive. Sometimes I feel like I'm yelling at an obsidian tower filled with denial and ignorance.

Bodhitheblackdog said:

PeteSilas said:

drugs taken to that extreme do not help anyone in the long run. You simply cannot keep that up and continue to be that productive long term. I think do think that people start out in small ways, they say elvis started drugs by taking pills to stay awake in the army, that turned into what we got with the 70's elvis. Also, too many people are saying the same thing about the time they were with him, that there was no indication he was on anything. I think the od might be a smokescreen, i mean how hard is it to believe a rockstar od'd? my question is, what are they/he hiding? The shame must be worse than the od which to me makes me give some credence to the aids rumours. It's still a mystery though.

PeteSilas; re the parts of your response I bolded: I can never understand it when people say there was no indication he was on anything...Really? No sleep and very little food/water for days on end for YEARS is not even remotely normal/healthy behavior..nor is wearing makeup 24/7 for men OR women. Now we know the price of being in the Purple Kingdom...the suspension of logic, common sense and any propensity to tell the truth. Re the shame/AIDS scenario... a distinct possibility thanks to the religious stew he was marinating in most of his life.

the business he was in is pretty crazy, I don't think the makeup would be that farfetched. The staying up for days, not eating, we only know those stories by what we hear and the people that tell us usually mention that in their estimation, he was sober. Some people are freaks like that, Malcolm X was said to have gotten by on a maximum of four hours sleep a night, donald trump claims likewise, human beings are not always the same and they don't have the same needs. My take on the drugs is, they always catch up to you and it don't take no thirty years to do it most of the time. Hell, as careful and measured as keith richards was with his heroin, it's obvious in footage from the eighties that he was on some shit, and that's not counting how badly he aged. Indications that he was on drugs would be the same for Prince as they would for anyone, wierd outbursts in public, dishevelled appearance, carelessness in creativity. I mean, yes, it's possible that he had help all those years but show me someone else who got as much done on some shit, it doesn't happen. Elvis was pathetic the last years (not always but often), MJ was a recluse and the very idea of coming back killed him. I just wish we had answers for what happened to Prince but I'll be patient and keep my mind open, they will surely come.

herb4 said:

PeteSilas said:

i don't get the "coincidence" of the previous od, I really don't.

"Drug dependency" and in all likelihood a genuine attempt to kick the habit; alone and by himslef with no help like Prince tackled most things. There is no "coincidence". Quite the opposite. It was the emersion of a pattern if anything.

almost dying would be a helluva wake up call, if that didn't do it for him nothing would. It's possible though, that he was just too strung out. But there is still a lot of wierd shit, why would he od on a different drug altogether (that's true?) and why would it just happen to be 50 times what it would take to kill him? And as for your statement that some people function fine on certain drugs, that's true, some people drink all day and still function, they are called "high maintenance drinkers" but even they end up not being able to keep it going I think. For every person like that, there are probably many more like my old history teacher, dear man that he was, a ww2 vet from poland who drank all the time and it wasn't possible to hide it, somehow he held his job even though he'd stagger around the room all the time, I even saw him one time in traffic, arguing with a cab driver who was road raging because he was driving drunk. He got out of his car, as calm as always and quietly threatened the cab driver with reporting his car number. I don't know, if you're around someone it would be different, i think it's strange that people around him still don't think he was an addict. I always see changes in family/friends, always, even if it's subtle and I don't know what's causing it right away.