Seeing Mike struggle with his personal demons, and later his health issues, was hard to watch. But it was just as hard to look away. I mean, this was the guy who provided the soundtrack to my childhood. I knew his dance moves, his songs, his monkey’s name. A true fan.

illustration by artistcalida (www.artistcalida.com)

By the time Bad was released in 1987, however, the man I knew so well had become a stranger. Mike’s once-beautiful face looked more like a mask — pale and unrecognizable.

Who could’ve imagined that the worse was yet to come. With each public appearance, the mask morphed into something more ghoulish, like one of the creatures from the “Thriller” video. Witnessing his transformation was pretty painful, but looking back, it’s clear that Mike was the one who was truly hurting.

The emotional pain of his fractured childhood haunted him endlessly. The loneliness of his superstardom turned him into a recluse. Botched plastic surgeries, rumors of anorexia, and the always-fading skin. It was just too much to bear. And yet there was more.

Battling lupus, a disease that compromises the immune system and tricks the body into attacking itself, reportedly caused Mike intense physical pain. It may have also been the reason he wore those hospital masks in public. Yet even with his serious health issues, the Michael Jackson circus rarely let up.

When the pop star admitted to an addiction to painkillers in 1993, I wasn’t surprised. My first thought was that he was looking to numb a lifetime of mental and physical suffering. And with millions of dollars at his disposal, he was giving it a valiant try. Maybe he needed to be on some sort of medication. Some of us do. The meds themselves weren’t the problem. I’ve been on my fair share over the last year, and I don’t begrudge anyone who needs to escape the pain temporarily.

The real issue was Mike’s self-medicating or overmedicating. Or, more acurately, keeping a physician around who would do both for him. It will be some time before we learn whether drugs played a role in the singer’s death, but reports are now surfacing that his prescription medications are at the center of the investigation. Not that I need to wait for that. I know a drug-induced haze when I see one. I’ve been there.

I spent weeks in pain after my surgery. At one point, I was poppin’ so much Percocet and Vicodin that my mom did a one-woman intervention, threatening to flush my pills if I didn’t stop “abusing them.” At the time, I remember thinking that she had no idea what I was going through, that she couldn’t possibly understand how much pain I was in. I even contemplated filling a prescription for an antidepressant and another for anxiety. But who was I kidding? Lorraine is the original slayer. She battled and beat cancer almost a decade ago, and she didn’t have any plans on becoming my enabler.

She was more insightful then I’d ever let on, because with my “habit” sufficiently kicked, I became an active part in my healing and recovery. It was no easy road, but it was certainly easier to master with a clear head. I wish the same had been true for Mike. But living subdued on a painkiller high didn’t give him much of a chance to begin with. He really had no way of confronting his past in a healthy way, nor did he have an opportunity to heal properly. Instead, he masked years of pain, tormented, ill, and ill-advised. May he rest in peace — finally.