..There was lorazepam, midazolam, diazepam. Yes, they sound alike for a reason – they are all benzodiazepines, drugs whose profound effect on receptors in the brain and elsewhere include decreases in anxiety, impairment of cognition (though often the subjective sense that it’s improved) and muscle relaxation. And they are often used as sleeping pills...
Yet not midazolam. It’s main use is, not unlike propofol, intravenous. Intravenous midazolam “knocks you out,” obliterating memory – not a bad result if you’re trying to avoid the pain of the knife. But to inject midazolam for insomnia? No doctor I know uses it that way. And the potentially lethal respiratory depression provoked by benzodiazepines are far more likely when given intravenously – and in the form of multiple different benzodiazepines. Sleep is many things, but coma is not one of them. My guess is that Jackson was using propofol to get “knocked out,” after which the multiple benzodiazepines would start to work to provide their version of artificial sleep – with sleep staging and architecture quite different from normal. For naps, he might have used propofol and/or midazolam as continuous infusions.
The American version of sleep, often described as “lie down and die,” sadly equates unconsciousness with sleep. You lie down. Then you wake up. Sort of like turning the electricity on and off on your computer.
Except we’re not machines.
We’re alive. We survive through regeneration. The internal processes of human life work so fast that we use up most of the materials in our body quickly. Subtract skeletal elements like bones and teeth plus bits of DNA and you’re pretty much new in about a month – different from what you were before.
That is if you get enough rest. Rest is critical to that regeneration – like food. Even passive, undirected rest like sleep is critical to life – animals deprived of it die.
Michael Jackson was getting decreased consciousness with propofol and benzodiazepines, but it’s doubtful it was the kind of rest that normally regenerates your body.