What we can learn from Michael Jackson

I know, it's unbelievable that I'd be weighing in on this discussion, but Jamie Lee Curtis' post, below, resonated with me. Read her article from Huffington Post and my posted comment.

Pain is part of the body's defense system, triggering a reflex reaction to retract from a painful stimulus, and helps adjust behavior to increase avoidance of that particular harmful situation in the future. So says Wikipedia. My favorite reference to Pain comes from The Princess Bride by William Goldman (I have quoted it on HuffPo before):

"Life is pain and anyone who tells you different is selling something."
Deepak Chopra explained that MJ asked him for narcotics to ease his pain. He seemed to ask everyone who had a medical license and some who didn't. He seemed to ask for himself and others, Mr. Omar I presume was a fellow junkie without medical insurance...

We're being shown now, in the weeks following Mr. Jackson's death, the supposed headwaters of his river of pain, the accident with Pepsi and the literal head on fire. It is a harrowing image, flames leaping off his head seconds before others came to his rescue.

The explanation is that this moment was the drug start point that eventually took over his life. I don't believe it. The pain he suffered was from his birth, from his being and becoming the commodity that then made him the omnipotent King of the Pop-Goes-The-Weasel-Jacko-In-The-Neverland-Box that destroyed him. Few children, put into the intense focus of their precious youth being marketed for other's pleasure, come out unscathed and with any sense of mental balance. I won't name names but we all know who they are as they have navigated their fame and falls on the covers of magazines and at the top of news hours. Rarely are the parents really held accountable for the fragile, destroyed youths as many of the young people get the F*&^% away as fast as their agents and lawyers get them... but the imprint is there, it cannot be undone without a painful process of self discovery and as we know... pain needs to be killed... not tolerated and examined.

Listen, I can relate. I too found painkillers after a routine cosmetic surgical procedure and I too became addicted, the morphine becomes the warm bath from which to escape painful reality. I was a lucky one. I was able to see that the pain had started long ago and far away and that the finding the narcotic was merely a matter of time. The pain needed numbing. My recovery from drug addiction is the single greatest accomplishment of my life... but it takes work -- hard, painful work -- but the help is there, in every town and career, drug/drink freed members of society, from every single walk and talk of life to help and guide.

I believe Mr. Jackson was in pain. Burns are a horrible injury and excruciating to recover from... but there was a time, when the physical pain ends and the emotional trauma takes over for which he needed the real help, the real treatment, the real focus. Mr. Jackson was an addict. It is coming out. Everywhere. He wanted relief and would get it in any name, place or method he could. It was and is a conspiracy of silence and I'm sure there were attempts to intervene and I'm sure his family and friends tried... but the addict gets what the addict wants, relief from the pain of their life... We all participated. We are all involved. Donations should be donated to drug treatment and prevention, not to his children. They don't need money. They need their father and sadly he is dead. Maybe, his morphing face will be know for not being the King of Pop but the sad mask of trauma and neglect and fear and yes... pain.

MY POSTED COMMENT ON HUFFINGTON 7/22/09:

Your post reminds me of a theme repeated often to my students who are learning emotion-regulation techniques.

Pain is a sign of health. A person’s foot that feels no pain when injured is a diseased limb on a diseased body. Its illogical to wish for a foot that feels no pain Yet Western medicine is hel1bent, to prevent pain in all its forms. While that may be an appropriate role for the AMA, it is not a healthy mind set for human individuals.

Emotional pain is an indication of injury to a healthy self. An unhealthy self does not feel pain. A guilty conscience reveals injury to an honorable self -- not the under-lying roots of a bad or evil person. Even Freud, with all his shortcomings, understood that an over-active conscience was the root of neuroses (in its broadest meaning).

Pain is life's greatest gift when embraced and humankind’s greatest folly when denied. An unhealthy aversion to pain seems to be a Western compulsion. Buddhism teaches us to embrace that which we fear, including death. Much of recent mental health research has focused on resilience, rather than the alleviation of discomfort.

Surely, some of those around Michael, the least of whom Depok, somehow were unable to enlighten Michael. I suppose it was not for lack of love for the man, but the persistent, often fatal, disease syndrome of fame-fortune-greed. A sad tale, but one that needs mature and intelligent discussion.