Questions swirl around Jackson’s doctor

‘I was kind of a bit alarmed’
Best-selling author Deepak Chopra, a longtime friend of Michael Jackson and a licensed medical doctor, said he first became concerned about the pop star's prescription drug use in 2005, when Jackson visited him shortly after his trial on sex abuse allegations.

Chopra said Jackson asked him to prescribe painkillers and already had a bottle of Oxycontin.

"I was kind of a bit alarmed. I said, 'Why are you taking that. You don't need that,' and then I started to probe a little further, and after I grilled him a little bit, he admitted he was getting them from a bunch of doctors," Chopra said.

Chopra said he refused to prescribe the medicine, but over the next four years the nanny of Jackson's children would periodically call to say that a parade of doctors was coming to his homes in Santa Barbara County, Los Angeles, Miami and New York City.

She told Chopra she felt they were overmedicating him, and one time she even tried to stage an intervention with Chopra's help, he said.

Each time, Jackson would discover the nanny's calls and then shut himself off from Chopra to avoid discussing the issue, he said.

Video   Deepak Chopra on Jackson's addiction, final days June 26: Best-selling author and radio host, Deepak Chopra, who knew Michael Jackson for 20 years, speaks with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. Countdown

Chopra, a spiritual adviser, said he last talked to Jackson directly about his drug use about six months ago and spoke with him on the phone about two weeks before his death.

But they did not discuss drug use on that call, and Chopra said in his final months, Jackson seemed much healthier and excited about his upcoming concerts in London.

"This is a strange addiction. You cannot get these pills or injections unless a physician prescribes them, and he had this bunch of enabling doctors who were in a sense criminals. And they get away with it half the time — and I hope they don't this time," he said.

"It's become a culture with celebrity doctors who in one sense get a sense of importance by hanging around with celebrities."

‘Like a moth to a flame’
Marilyn Monroe died at 36 from an overdose of sleeping pills in August 1962. She had been under a doctor's care at the time.

Elvis Presley, who died in 1977 at 42, was known to travel with George Nichopoulos, a former physician who overprescribed drugs to clients. Nichopoulos lost his medical license but was acquitted of criminal charges related to Elvis' death.

More recently, Los Angeles County prosecutors charged a psychiatrist and a doctor with conspiring to provide Anna Nicole Smith with thousands of prescription pills.

Smith died Feb. 8, 2007, in Florida after collapsing at a hotel; medical authorities later ruled her death an overdose.

Megastars may be given more leeway than ordinary patients because of their wealth — and because of expectations that the famous often have eccentric habits, said Albright, the sociologist.

"It's almost expected in some ways if it's a rock star or a big actor. You almost expect them to have a larger-than-life lifestyle," she said. "People are drawn to celebrity like a moth to a flame, including these doctors who want to be around that lightness and brightness."

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