In the selections Ivy quoted (bullet points) one expert aid that in order to do rehab successfully there are certain conditions, such as having support and the commitment/desire to get 'clean'--the expert (can't recall who) said tht MJ needed a team behind him--a therapist, 12 step program, both individually and in a group, and so on.
I think you are not factoring in hopw hard it is to kick addiction or dependency--and the reason it is so hard is a person's brain chemistry actually changes while they are addicted or dependent. The neural pathways are forged under the addiction and all these have to be reset and this can take --literally--years. It also involves diet changes, exercise, a whole life change. Beating an addiction is not easy, esp. if it has become a habit over time (even if not 100% all the time but enough to form a pattern).
There are many youtube vids on addiction and the brain. It is a fascinating subject and very relevant not only for this case but for treatment of all the many people who develop various addictions.
Not saying MJ could not have done it--where there's a will there's a way, etc. But at that time in his life he was not able IMO to commit to living his life free of prescription meds, even though he was getting juice shakes, almond milk, and was a vegetarian and he obviously cared about being healthy, he still had so many other pressures, that at that time going into serious, committed rehab did not seem an option. Also Jackson lawyerds have never spelled out when he was going to do that or any proof that he was committed at the time frame they are talking about. I also agree with the xpert that the 93 rehab was temporary rather than a apermanent thing--once he left the UK there was no follow-up and he landed back in the midst of the Chandler nightmare and walked ight into the horror of the strip-search. You need a certain amt of calm in your life to focus on rehab and he did not have in in 93, 2003-05, or in 09.
My post was an answer to other posts that were saying that the Jacksons' case was not logical, I was just saying they have a logic, based on the fact that Michael could have been cured of his addction/dependency (which I believe becasue he suceeded for long period of times) and his insomnia (I would hope so, but , especially when you read what Metzger had tried, I'm really not convinced, unfortunately).
Addiction is an interesting subject though. I believe one of the strongest one is nicotine, one of the hardest to get rid of. I said before I worked in a hopsital, a long long time ago, and some of the patients were heroin addicts. Heroin comes from opium, it's more or less the same kind of substance as pain medication, taken from opium too. I was shocked at the time, because most of them were sucessfully detoxed, but most of them would relapse. Out of all the patients I have seen , maybe over a hundred, only a handful made it. A lot of them had aids, so no real motivation, because at the time, it was a certain death in 2 years, you couldn't do anything about it. So these ones had no real motivation. For the others, and that's what shocked me, the problem was mostly social : heroin is illegal and extremely expensive. They would spend an average salary in 3-4 days. So they started stealing - and could get violent when they are in withdrawal, so very often they were rejected by their families and friends. Then those who worked lost their jobs, and then their homes. Over here at the time, that was the beginning of the end, it was hard to "recover" socially when you got that low. So we would spend a lot of public money on detox and rehab, usually successfully, and always done in a different part of the country so they would be away from the dealers (who didn't really like losing clients, they went after them, including inside the hospital, to get them to relapse). Then they would get out of rehab, in a town where they had nothing, knew no one, and that's where the public money would stop, because they were cured. If at the time they succeded in starting a new life there, they would be OK, if they did not- most cases- they would come back to their original place and relapse, and we would do it all over again after a few months/weeks. Some patients had "X detox programs" on their medical files, the doctors didn't bother counting them, it was useless. Some countries started programs that were much more intelligent than ours (I think it was the UK) , by giving the drug for free, and taking dealers and money problems out of the equation. They had heroin addicts who could keep their homes, their money , sometimes even their jobs, were kept away from dealers, and were sucessfully detoxed when they decided to, with a much lesser HIV rate. Nobody wants to be an addict, so they eventually had much less adicts than we had, they were successfully cured and did not relapse. Same drug, same problem, different outcome.
What I mean is that it's not only the drug itself. If you take Michael's case, the drugs were originally prescribed to deal with pain- And that's the problem, IMO, because strong pain meds are opioids. For example here, you can very easily be presprcibed a mix of paracetamol-codein, well codein is an opioid. In this case in a very small dose, but you do get tolerant to it if you take it long enough. As long as scientists have not found another molecule that works efficiently with pain, people with pain issues will have to deal with opioids, and often with dependency : if you can't cure the problem that causes pain, you can't really solve the problem, so all a doctor can do will be try to find the right thing that works for you, with a less opioids as possible, to minimise depedance. But dependance will very likely be there. So the problem is, where do you draw the line between abusing drugs or taking it because you have to ?.
That's what Soundmind said : how bad was Michael's problem ? When they give examples of Michael going to a hopital for shots of demerol because of a foot injury, is he acting like a drug addict ? No, of course not. What else could the doctors have given him ? In his case, with a high tolerance, it will be a rather big dose of opioids, nothing else. So again, very hard to draw the line, and that's probably why we have experts contradicting each other. IMO, it was not possible for him to be certain to be opiates free for the rest of his life : another accident or health problem that creates pain will have him take opiates, because there's nothing else. Is that being addicted ? Is that a relapse ? No, not to me. The "addiction" problem is solved when you can manage it, take it only when you really need it, it's a tricky balance to maintain.
Add to that that some doctors- like Klein-who apparently did not help giving demerol for cosmetic procedures.
I believe he was successful because he was free of it for many years, so yes, in theory, he could have made it. Now if experts look for the slightest dose of opiates - again the hopistal and foot injury example- ignoring the reason why it was given, well they will call him and addict.
