1st of all, mods please lock this up if it's deemed inappropriate or insensitive.

The question has been playing on my mind for a while. As we are now aware P was in so much pain since the hip operation & his meds were a dependancy & possibly not an addiction - bigger doses to cope with pain management seems to be the common consensus.

We can all imagine the pain he went through? e.g. he complained to Jill that his hands hurt after playing piano on the P&M tour. I just wonder how he or indeed anyone could survive that amount of pain & in his case the emotional distress of not being able to create or perform as he once used to?

The quality of his life would have rapidly deteriorated, i'm no expert in post hip operation pain management but since he had it done [was it in 2007?] things were clearly progressivey worse. Yes he could have sought treatment to remove his dependancy in 2016 BUT would the pain have lessended in time?

Dare I say it but is P better off now , in peace, without pain & knowing that he spread joy to so many.

I'm not sure to be honest. From what Judith said in her interview,he was taking the steps necessary to get better and I'd like to think that he wanted that. I'm amazed that he was able to produce such beautiful and moving performances with the amount of pain he was in. I think that he was overly pushing himself though doing two shows back to back at two hours at a time and that likely contributed to his pain. He had a lot of things planned according to those who were close to him and was planning to release a new album with the new band and the Atlanta shows. It was also reported that he was planning to tour Australia again with the Piano & Mic shows. Judith said in her interview with The Violet Reality that he was working on new music and had some songs that were never recorded so it seems he was still pretty active and productive.

Use this thread to post, thanks http://prince.org/msg/7/457835